The World According to Tim Skipper

Well I’ve just come back from the Lotus factory where my friend Adrian and I were getting the full tour, arranged courtesy of Guy Munday at Lotus Cars dealer Stratton Motor Company.

Adrian is collecting his deep purple S1 Sport 190 this afternoon from Stratton Motor Company, and I’m due to collect my new black S2 Sport 190 next Friday, 19th April.

The tour of the factory was very interesting, we were introduced to and taken round by Debs Marsh, who runs the Official Lotus Club, and Guy Munday from Stratton Motor Company. We got to see everywhere except the paint shop (which is out of bounds to visitors due to cleanliness requirements) and shown the various stages of production. It’s not a noisy environment at all, mostly due to the lack of automation - just a few lifts and the odd machine here and there.

We got to see both Elise and VX220/Speedster production, which run on parallel lines. Interestingly the two cars only have around 100 common components out of the 2,000 or so in total, quite a lot lower than I had imagined.

I was told production of the VX220/Speedster has been cut considerably from last year, and that the split between UK VX220 and EC Opel Speedsters was approximately 15:85%.

We saw a few Elise in the new colour of Ardent Red, which is a shade or so darker than the existing red colour. I thought it was very nice indeed, but for obvious reasons my eye was continually drawn to the black ones!

Once through the main factory, we went over to the separate Motorsport facility where we were met once again by Chris Dinnage. This is what I had really come to see, as the Motorsport boys are currently in the process of building my S2 Sport 190!

And there it was, sat in the middle of the workshop, still covered in the protective black film, missing it’s rear clam and without wheels, but otherwise almost complete. I must have been grinning like an idiot again (something I seem to be doing a lot of recently)!

It was good to see it with the rear clam off and the engine exposed, with four shiny aluminium throttle bodies looking eager to suck in any passing children, and the twin outlet Lotus branded sports exhaust hanging underneath at the rear.

I had originally wanted to have the Racing Dynamics dampers/Eibach springs fitted - these are the individually hand built & dyno tested, fully adjustable dampers with remote reservoirs, and very high quality kit - but had taken it out of my final order on grounds of cost (£1,300). Well I’m pleased to say they’re now on the car anyway!

I’m taking delivery of the car next Friday (19th April) and it will now also come with a set of standard silver Elise wheels & Bridgestone Potenza tyres, and a set of OZ Superleggera black Lotus Motorsport branded rims wearing Yokohoma A049 Advan tyres. It’ll save me a fortune in the long run of wearing out track tyres driving around on the roads. My sincere thanks must go to Chris again for sorting these and the Eibach kit for me.

To finish off the tour, Adrian got a few hot laps with Chris in the same yellow Sport 190 development car that I drove on my previous visit. He came back with a similar expression to the one I had!

So, only one week to go now!

This article was first published on 11th April 2002 at www.sport190.com.