Hi all,
Sorry it's been a while, almost 2 months since my last post. Oops. We are still here, honest.
In short, there has been no progress on the car. I do have some valid excuses however!
Firstly, I have been under a rather large amount of pressure to finish the DIY (building a utility room, refurbing the downstairs toilet and completely stripping and redoing the master bedroom). I had to get the house ready for this:
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| The reason why the car hasn't progressed. |
Yup, I got married! I don't think I would have been popular with my now wife if I hadn't prioritised helping with the preparations and having the house tidy for some of our guests to stay over! However, now that these two rather large events (and the honeymoon) are over you can expect us to restart the build and be posting regularly again soon! It was a bit of a shame that the car wasn't ready for the wedding, however we have a rather wonderful story about that:
I'm a very lucky man. Amy, my wife, grew up in a household of cars, motorbikes and Spitfires (not the car kind either!) and she's now a Spacecraft Structures Engineer. This early inspiration is in no small part due to my father-in-law who has a few classic Americans, one of which we were going to use as a wedding car. However, Amy's mum broke her ankle 6 weeks before the wedding and also her Grandmother moved down to be nearer the family. As a consequence my Father-in-law has been running around after them all and simply didn't have the time to get one of the vehicles ready.
We totally understood when he said he couldn't bring any of them up, however we were at a loss as to what we were going to use as a wedding car and it was only a few days to go. I put a Facebook post on the Caterham and Lotus 7 Owners Group and was immediately bowled over by the outpouring of offers of help (thank you to everyone who were willing to offer their cars for us to use). However I got a phone call the next day from Simon Lambert, Chief Motorsport & Technical Officer of Caterham who had heard of our plight and said that Caterham wanted to help! It turns out he lives relatively near us and delivered this beauty for us to use for the weekend!
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| A very kind delivery from Caterham themselves! |
It turned out that the car was almost a direct copy of the one we're building ourselves; A 360R SV. It was a really kind offer and we are most grateful to everyone at Caterham Cars for the fantastic gesture. Thank you! I know the community can give Caterham a bit of stick from time to time, however in this case they absolutely came up trumps!
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| The custom made number plates were a fantastic touch! |
It certainly created a bit of a stir when I parked up outside our wedding venue! The custom number plates were the icing on the cake, I almost forgot to remove them before driving home the next day, as I'm not quite sure they're legal!
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| We really didn't want to give her back on Sunday! |
The next day we did take the long way home, it left me in no doubt
that we've bought the right car for us. I really didn't want to give the keys back when Simon came to pick her up!
Thanks once again to Caterham and the Seven community, you have been most generous and kind. It certainly gives us motivation to get ours on the road...
