So after a long wait, today was the day I've been waiting almost two years for, today I collected my new toy from the factory!
My Emira journey started when I happened upon an advert for the launch event during the goodwood weekend. I was instantly enamoured with the looks of the car and, after a few days of internal debate and some encouragement from my partner, put down my deposit on the 12th of July 2021. I joined the forum pretty much as soon as I'd done that and have been lurking around on a few threads since!
Fast forward, through a few delays which we already know about, it came to March and my checkout was ready to go. I wanted to collect the car from the factory, it's my first brand new car, and a major step up from my previous line up of cars (the last being a 2017 Mustang GT), and I, like a lot of enthusiasts am a bit of a pedant, so I wanted to get the car PPF'd prior to my collection.
I knew Elliot at Detail Your Eye Candy was doing the PPF work for Lotus, so reached out to him and had a chat about what he was doing for them regarding the packages. I wanted something a little custom though. With the upper black pack, I wanted the full pillars and roof coated in PPF on top of the P1 package that Lotus were offering. Elliot was happy to do this if Scott was, so, after a few emails back and forth to make sure I wasn't treading on any toes, it's all agreed, I'll get the P1 through Lotus and then handle any additional bits directly with Elliot. I want to thank both Scott and Elliot for letting me do that.
The PPF did take a little while to get organised, I think a combination of the Lotus team doing 80 or so handovers in April, plus some vacations on both sides, meant that my car only got finished last week, that's why my March build turned into a June delivery. I'm pretty sure this delay isn't normal and that others have had a better experience with the PPF timelines though. I think mine is an isolated incident.
So that brings us to yesterday, I got the train up to Norwich with my partner and checked into our hotel. We had dinner at Farmyard which I thoroughly recommend, if any does have the evening to spare prior to collection. I did have one minor hiccough though. Once I got to Norwich, I tried to book a taxi to get me from my Hotel to Hethel in the morning. After calling 7 different taxi companies, I had very little luck with any of them having an appropriate time slot, I could either turn up very very early or 20/30 mins late. A quick email to Scott asking for advice, and he offered to come pick us up. Well out of the bounds of what he needed to do, but got me out of a bind!
So, Scott picked me up this morning and we had a really good chat in the car en route to the factory. It's clear to me that Scott really cares about the customers who are buying the cars. He was explaining to me about some of the previous collections and some of the issues that had been found in cars, how they were fixing the wider known issues but also some of the more localised ones. We also had a little bit of a history lesson as we passed by East Carleton Manor.
Scott handed over to Sam who then took myself and my partner around the factory. Sam, only 8 months at Lotus so far, but clearly a passionate employee and an asset to Lotus. He was happy to answer pretty much any question I threw at him and clearly knows his stuff. We saw a mix of Chinese i4s (all Lotus NYO branded) which apparently are heading off to China shortly as well as some V6s as well in build. It seems they are building them in parallel right now because Sam mentioned that yesterday they were putting together i4 engines, but today, we got to see the V6 engines going together.
We even watched as an i4 and then a V6 passed by, the i4 was quiet in comparison, I'm happy with my choice!
Back over to the main building and my car is sat there under the cover. We did the reveal and inspected the car. It looked great and I had a beaming smile all day from that point! I did notice one small thing, the shift knob was a bit scratched (someone moving the car with a ring on?), as I don't wear a ring I wouldn't expect mine to get scratched, I pointed it out to Sam and within 10 minutes there was someone over replacing it for a fresh one, thanks Sam!
A quick lunch and a trip into the shop (I got an umbrella and a t-shirt), then an introduction to the car from Sam and we got on our way. 220 miles or so later and I arrived home in Bristol. Wow, what a drive!
I'm incredibly happy with the car so far, time will tell how things unfold but so far, the car is pretty much* faultless!
I want to say a massive thank you to Scott and Sam for helping to organise and then sorting everything out for me today, both my partner and I had a great time at the factory and Scott and Sam were brilliant.
I also want to say that I think Elliot has done a fantastic job on the car, very happy with what I'm seeing so far, the PPF is exactly how I wanted it! Elliot applied a coating to the entire car, and even the windscreen, was pretty cool seeing the water bead up and run off in the light shower I had to drive through, barely needed the wipers!
*Not quite faultless, I noticed that my front number plate isn't screwed on properly. The plinth attached to the bumper is screwed in, but only one of the screws attaching the plate mount to the plinth is actually tight. I can't get an allen key in there easily so will probably need to take the plate off to be able to screw it back together, looks like it should be a relatively easy fix anyway, just need to get some new sticky pads
Elliot posted some pictures of the car earlier, , much better than what I have!
My Emira journey started when I happened upon an advert for the launch event during the goodwood weekend. I was instantly enamoured with the looks of the car and, after a few days of internal debate and some encouragement from my partner, put down my deposit on the 12th of July 2021. I joined the forum pretty much as soon as I'd done that and have been lurking around on a few threads since!
Fast forward, through a few delays which we already know about, it came to March and my checkout was ready to go. I wanted to collect the car from the factory, it's my first brand new car, and a major step up from my previous line up of cars (the last being a 2017 Mustang GT), and I, like a lot of enthusiasts am a bit of a pedant, so I wanted to get the car PPF'd prior to my collection.
I knew Elliot at Detail Your Eye Candy was doing the PPF work for Lotus, so reached out to him and had a chat about what he was doing for them regarding the packages. I wanted something a little custom though. With the upper black pack, I wanted the full pillars and roof coated in PPF on top of the P1 package that Lotus were offering. Elliot was happy to do this if Scott was, so, after a few emails back and forth to make sure I wasn't treading on any toes, it's all agreed, I'll get the P1 through Lotus and then handle any additional bits directly with Elliot. I want to thank both Scott and Elliot for letting me do that.
The PPF did take a little while to get organised, I think a combination of the Lotus team doing 80 or so handovers in April, plus some vacations on both sides, meant that my car only got finished last week, that's why my March build turned into a June delivery. I'm pretty sure this delay isn't normal and that others have had a better experience with the PPF timelines though. I think mine is an isolated incident.
So that brings us to yesterday, I got the train up to Norwich with my partner and checked into our hotel. We had dinner at Farmyard which I thoroughly recommend, if any does have the evening to spare prior to collection. I did have one minor hiccough though. Once I got to Norwich, I tried to book a taxi to get me from my Hotel to Hethel in the morning. After calling 7 different taxi companies, I had very little luck with any of them having an appropriate time slot, I could either turn up very very early or 20/30 mins late. A quick email to Scott asking for advice, and he offered to come pick us up. Well out of the bounds of what he needed to do, but got me out of a bind!
So, Scott picked me up this morning and we had a really good chat in the car en route to the factory. It's clear to me that Scott really cares about the customers who are buying the cars. He was explaining to me about some of the previous collections and some of the issues that had been found in cars, how they were fixing the wider known issues but also some of the more localised ones. We also had a little bit of a history lesson as we passed by East Carleton Manor.
Scott handed over to Sam who then took myself and my partner around the factory. Sam, only 8 months at Lotus so far, but clearly a passionate employee and an asset to Lotus. He was happy to answer pretty much any question I threw at him and clearly knows his stuff. We saw a mix of Chinese i4s (all Lotus NYO branded) which apparently are heading off to China shortly as well as some V6s as well in build. It seems they are building them in parallel right now because Sam mentioned that yesterday they were putting together i4 engines, but today, we got to see the V6 engines going together.
We even watched as an i4 and then a V6 passed by, the i4 was quiet in comparison, I'm happy with my choice!
Back over to the main building and my car is sat there under the cover. We did the reveal and inspected the car. It looked great and I had a beaming smile all day from that point! I did notice one small thing, the shift knob was a bit scratched (someone moving the car with a ring on?), as I don't wear a ring I wouldn't expect mine to get scratched, I pointed it out to Sam and within 10 minutes there was someone over replacing it for a fresh one, thanks Sam!
A quick lunch and a trip into the shop (I got an umbrella and a t-shirt), then an introduction to the car from Sam and we got on our way. 220 miles or so later and I arrived home in Bristol. Wow, what a drive!
I'm incredibly happy with the car so far, time will tell how things unfold but so far, the car is pretty much* faultless!
I want to say a massive thank you to Scott and Sam for helping to organise and then sorting everything out for me today, both my partner and I had a great time at the factory and Scott and Sam were brilliant.
I also want to say that I think Elliot has done a fantastic job on the car, very happy with what I'm seeing so far, the PPF is exactly how I wanted it! Elliot applied a coating to the entire car, and even the windscreen, was pretty cool seeing the water bead up and run off in the light shower I had to drive through, barely needed the wipers!
*Not quite faultless, I noticed that my front number plate isn't screwed on properly. The plinth attached to the bumper is screwed in, but only one of the screws attaching the plate mount to the plinth is actually tight. I can't get an allen key in there easily so will probably need to take the plate off to be able to screw it back together, looks like it should be a relatively easy fix anyway, just need to get some new sticky pads
Elliot posted some pictures of the car earlier, , much better than what I have!
