On a sunny Sunday 29th April 2001, all lotus owners, friends and family were invited to go and see the production lines at the Lotus factory by Lotus Life, the official Lotus club. This was just after the announcement of the redundancies at the factory, so some Lotus owners decided to use the opportunity to turn up early and give a letter to the company outlining the fears of the owners.
However, given that I'm not known for getting out of bed early, we didn't leave Croydon until about 11:00am, and so weren't likely to get to the factory much before 2:00pm.
Getting to the factory is not the easiest of journey's to decide which way to go. Shell GeoStar (www.shellgeostar.co.uk) tells you to go around the M25 if you tell it you live in South Croydon, and go straight through London if you say you live in Croydon.There isn't much in it either way, so we decided to go around the M25 because it's an easier journey to do.
After driving for around an hour and half, we came off the M11 and started to go down the A11. We then started to see the first of the other Lotus cars coming the other way, obviously the early birds that had got there at 11:00am for the opening!
We decided to stop off at the war memorial that is on the A11 for a spot of lunch. We have yet to find a cool box that fits into the boot, so the sandwiches were getting a little warm by the time we got around to eating them! Once we arrived at the factory, there were rather a lot of Lotus cars around! There aren't any pictures from inside the factory, we weren't allowed to take any... However, there was the obligatory picture outside the factory gates! We thoroughly enjoyed the day, thanks to all the people at Lotus who made it possible.
