Superboat club?

It doesn't look like much now, on a cold and rainy day in January, but wait till May when she will be on the fleet at only 200 credits per day inclusive of skipper, hostess and all the trimmings. (in Poole)

For those of you who want to know more, it's a Sunseeker Portofino 47, sleeps 4, hosts upto 12 for a day.

R8 V10 Spyder

I've just been offered an R8 V10 Spyder for delivery in February (cancelled order). I thought that is 2 months before the first ones were due to arrive in UK - can anyone shed any light?

I'd love to snag it, but unfortunately it's caught me on the hoof since I had budgeted to buy our one in April and I don't have £120,000 of financing in place right now. Anyone out there that is interesting in running it on the Vehicle Owner's Plan do get in touch - with the current waiting list running to March 2011 the depreciation on this car will be very little over the next year and it will be a strong earner in the club - so its a good purchase if you have the funds.

Lightning on the 27th

Back in Blighty - too cold to type! Just arranged a special preview of the Lightning at our next clubhouse event on January 27th. I've never actually seen the car in the flesh, so I'm quite excited.

Love your car enough to sleep with it?

I have now had 8 enquiries to open an international franchise of e25 in as many days.

Perhaps the most exotic of which has to be from the Bolton Corporation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They are building a development of 70 super luxury apartments in the city centre - each with its own car port! You literally drive into a lift and take your car up to your apartment and sleep with it - plenty of e25 members who would like the sound of that.

They are interested in enhancing the reputation and quality of the development by offering e25 memberships with each apartment.

I don't know why more developers don't do this - not the car port, but offer a car club membership as part of the luxury services, instead of an exorbitantly priced parking space.

For anyone with a reason to be in KL, more info available here

Barren Bahrain

My trip to Bahrain turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. I had thought that with over 100,000 British ex-pats and an F1 track there could be a nice market here for an e25 branch. Unfortunately it did not take long for me to realise that the island is only 20 miles wide at its longest point, and a nice drive would involve driving 300 miles through Saudi Arabia in a dead straight line (with any female in your group covering her head) and you need to reach Qatar before you could look forward to enjoying a beer. Most of the guys I talked to said they would rather just fly over to Dubai and enjoy membership there (or in Qatar). So instead I just took a bit of time off and played some golf in what must have been the world's biggest bunker, interspersed with green bits.

I'll leave you with some pictures of a 27m boat (sleeps 8) in Dubai. I met the owner of this beauty who is very keen to promote it to e25 members to use on a shared basis - I'll thrash out a deal when I get back to Blighty.

Now back to Istanbul to pick up the kids.

X marks the spot

Happy New Year. I wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2010, and a better year than 2009 (which shouldn't be too hard to achieve!)

I start the year on a market research trip to the Middle East.

It was always going to be a good trip after my wife managed to sweet talk us into a free upgrade to Business on the flight to Dubai.

First stop was to Gabby and Shomail's house - 2 e25 members from London who have a collection of 5 supercars that they are interested in VOPing if we open up in Dubai. Best of all was the 612 but I couldn't resist asking them if we could borrow the Phantom (with chauffeur) to visit the Yas Island Formula 1 facility.

It was the first time I've been on the "passenger side" of a Rolls Royce and I was really excited. [Note to staff: it's easy we to forget the adrenalin rush from getting into a smart set of wheels - although we do it everyday, for our members its a really special feeling and we should always promote that moment.]

We did a good reckie around the marina, hotel and Ferrari World, and Ilke is modeling the preferred location for our Abu Dhabi F1 members trip in November - outside the sushi bar, trackside next to the marina and with a nice view of that fancy hotel lighting blob.

Next stop Bahrain...