Unfortunately this story does not have a happy ending, apologies for the delay in updates but I’ve been quite busy getting things sorted out.
On the next day, Saturday, I needed to take my son Jack to the airport and pick up my girlfriend who is already on the flight over from London. But when I start the car the problem is back again, I can hear the engine is not firing on all cylinders and scanning the codes I can see a coil problem and misfiring but now on cylinder 4 and not cylinder 2.
We spend several hours on the phone with Landrover Assistance and they tell me they won’t cover a taxi to the airport and that I must get a hire car but hire cars are only available at the airport.
I have to get Jack to the airport and pick up my girlfriend and so I drive out the 40 minutes to the airport in limp mode as it is the only option I have. I get Jack on his plane and greet my girlfriend at the gate.
However when we get back to the car in Narvik Airport Car Park the car is completely dead, it won’t even unlock from the key fob. We spent several hours on the phone again with Landrover Assistance and I booked a hire car and a house to stay in in Narvik temporarily whilst we sort this out.
Initially we had hoped the issue was a bad battery as this can cause all types of other issues we had heard. The recovery company transported my car from the airport to a secure location in Narvik and I managed to source a AGM-069 battery replacement in Narvik. But although we confirmed the original battery was completely dead (only holding 4v) and the new battery did get the car unlocked and the engine to start it is still in limp mode and misfiring (again it did actually recover and start running normally but only for 5 minutes before it started misfiring again).
On Sunday we drove the hire car to Sweden and stayed at the Ice Hotel - this was fantastic and my girlfriend loved it - so this was something else worth the long trip up. If you ever get the chance to visit I would highly recommend it. The Ice Hotel Restaurant was also really good, not that expensive (for Norway) but by far the best food we had on the trip.
But the road conditions were bad, the Norwegian roads were fine as were the roads up in the mountains but as we got further into Sweden we found they don’t salt the roads and just clear them. The last 100km of the E10 to Jukkasjärvi were completely covered in snow and ice. The hire car was 4WD and had spiked (metal studded) tyres and I could feel that slipping (especially down hill). If I had tried this in the Emira I would have had to turn back - not worth the risk.
On Monday night back in Narvik in our temporary accommodation we finally got to see the Northern Lights, quite faint (the solar forecast being SP3 out of SP0-10 with SP3 being the minimum needed to see them) but they were there. They were not at all what I was expecting them to be like, they are difficult to describe and even harder to photograph, we took dozens of pictures but only 2 photos came out (even these 2 photos don't do it justice and only show a small part of the full aurora that was visible to the eye across the sky).
But again seeing the Northern Lights was another thing that made the trip worthwhile. If the Emira had been running we would have been driving back south in Sweden by now and would have missed this - so a silver lining of some kind I guess.
So we had to abandon the rest of the holiday and now we are back in the UK having flown back yesterday.
My car is still in Narvik and they are sorting out what to do now; either fix it in Narvik (the recovery guys are having an expert come out to look at it) if that doesn’t work they will transport it to the nearest Lotus Dealership, this is in Stockholm, 1000 miles from Narvik for them to look at, if Lotus Stockholm can’t fix it then the car will be repatriated back to a Lotus dealership in the UK. If it gets fixed locally or in Stockholm I will need to fly out and drive the car home, if it gets repatriated then it can take up to 8 weeks to get back to the UK.
Would I do this again given what I know now and how the end turned out? Absolutely, 100%, the experiences we had made the problems worthwhile several times over. We are already planning the next road trip in Europe with the Emira for next summer (but I’ll make damn sure I have cast-iron-guaranteed roadside assistance).
