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Cars

Royal Mail British Auto Legends Stamps Delivery with a Jaguar E-Type

Royal Mail Auto Legends stamps. If you haven’t heard about this, it is the limited edition of stamps from Royal Mail to congratulate the iconic cars of British automotive industry. Personally, I am not a stamp collector but when I saw these stamps on internet, I was really excited to see them live.

Hopefully, Royal Mail was very kind to send me. However, the sending process was totally different from what I thought. Honestly, I was expecting to receive the stamps via Royal Mail special delivery inside an envelope. And Royal Mail thought that, it is a bit boring way to delivery the stamps and they decided to use a red Jaguar E-Type for the delivery. I am not joking, Royal Mail arrived to my home with a red Jaguar E-Type to deliver these stamps. However, the story did not finish here!

The stamps were not inside an envelope, they were inside a bespoke made engraved red toolbox. Literally, this was the best PR campaign I have ever seen. The whole process was fantastic and left a great memory to remember in future.

Anyway, let’s go back to British Auto Legends stamps. The stamps feature; Jaguar E-Type — 1961, MG MGB — 1962, Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow — 1965, Morgan Plus 8 — 1968, Aston Martin DB5 — 1963, and Lotus Esprit — 1976.

And the prices for British Auto Legends stamps start from as low as £5.64! And it will be a great collectors’ item in future. For the record, never send me an email to buy these stamps in year 2053. I am pretty sure that, I will at least a half-century and instead asking to buy the stamps from me. Go and buy them now :)

You can buy the British Auto Legends stamps from Royal Mail’s online store.

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Cars

50 Years of James Bond: Bond Cars And Bond Girls Part 2

Here is the second part of the Bond Cars and Bond Girls. Placing all photos in one article will increase time to read, so I separated the post into parts.

The Man with Golden Gun (1974) (Roger Moore)
Britt Ekland
AMC Hornet
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (Roger Moore)
Barbara Bach
Lotus Esprit S1
Moonraker (1979) (Roger Moore)
Lois Chiles
MP Lafer
For Your Eyes Only (1981) (Roger Moore)
Carole Bouquet

Octopussy (1983) (Roger Moore)
Maud Adams
Range Rover Convertible
A View to Kill (1985) (Roger Moore)
Tanya Roberts
The Living Daylights (1987) (Timothy Dalton)
Maryam D’abo
Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante
Pictures’ Copyrights
United Artists
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Cars

Goodwood Festival of Speed: Lotus Sculpture

Lotus sculpture in Goodwood Festival of Speed is one of most impressing structures I have ever seen. The height of the sculpture was so tall and I had to go further to take photo of the whole structure. 
Another thing made it so impressive is the Formula 1 cars of Lotus.They were attached to sculpture. The idea was very creative and I believe it was quite hard to construct. 

Even this sculpture was a very good reason to visit Goodwood Festival of Speed. I really wish to talk more about the sculpture but I am not a design critics! 

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Cars

Photos from Malaysian Formula 1 Race

Here are the results from the Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix.
For more photos: Cars & Life Facebook Page

POS DRIVER TEAM GRID FASTEST LAP RACE TIME POINTS
1 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 8 1:41.680 2:44:51.812 25
2 Sergio Perez Sauber 9 1:41.021 +00:02.263 18
3 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1 1:41.539 +00:14.591 15
4 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 4 1:41.017 +00:17.688 12
5 Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault 10 1:40.722 +00:29.456 10
6 Bruno Senna Williams-Renault 13 1:41.404 +00:37.667 8
7 Paul Di Resta Force India-Mercedes 14 1:41.819 +00:44.412 6
8 Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 18 1:41.922 +00:46.985 4
9 Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 16 1:42.173 +00:47.892 2
10 Michael Schumacher Mercedes GP 3 1:41.760 +00:49.996 1
11 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 5 1:41.342 +01:15.527
12 Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 15 1:41.756 +01:16.828
13 Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP 7 1:41.863 +01:18.593
14 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 2 1:42.100 +01:19.719
15 Felipe Massa Ferrari 12 1:42.051 +01:37.319
16 Vitaly Petrov Caterham-Renault 19 1:43.513 lapped
17 Timo Glock Marussia-Cosworth 20 1:44.757 lapped
18 Heikki Kovalainen Caterham-Renault 24 1:43.803 lapped
19 Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 11 1:42.237 retired, 54 laps
20 Charles Pic Marussia-Cosworth 21 1:44.813 lapped
21 Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 23 1:45.909 lapped
22 Pedro de la Rosa HRT-Cosworth 22 1:46.244 lapped
23 Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 17 1:44.202 retired, 46 laps
24 Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 6 2:08.464 retired, 3 laps

Pictures’ Copyrights
Mercedes

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Cars

Lotus: Future ?

In 1996, I was my first in Lotus in Germany. Unfortunately, I am not from the Lotus fan generation. Honestly, I am not a fan of Lotus, and I have never dreamed of driving one. I always found Lotus as a non-desirable or too intellectual! Lotus is a car to be driven by people whom I cannot even define them. I think Lotus could not manage to create an image in my mind.
Despite its unclear image and my weird associations, I do know that Lotus is excellent in terms of handling and steering wheel accuracy. They know what they are doing, but some of us are not aware of that! (Including me!) One of the reasons for this, I never seen a Lotus racing with a Ferrari or with a Porsche on TV. I know there were some Lotus cars and they were really fast but I am not that old. All I remember from Lotus; Top Gear track, Opel Astra’s suspension and next decades more exquisite car.
On TV, they always talk about football players’ transfer from one team to another but they never mention about the transfers like Lotus did. It was not mentioned on mass-media but Lotus made the most remarkable business transfer on automotive industry. Currently, they have the best people for their job and they know what they are doing. Honestly, Lotus has the best staff in automotive industry. They are not new graduates or people lack of passion, they are transferred from the brands which you cannot even imagine.
In my opinion, Lotus has the best people in business (I am repeating again) and I can say one thing very clearly. If these people cannot change the faith of Lotus, nobody could ever change it. Lotus is going to reveal five new models and if they fail, this means one thing. Close the Lotus, nothing can be done. You cannot find better and more experienced people, unless you are planning to transfer from outer space.
Give these people a shopping tray and wait for one year, then you will be wait list to buy one!!
These are the people who will create the new Lotus.
Wiebke Bauer – Director Licensing (From Ferrari)
Claudio Berro – Director of Motorsport (From Ferrari)
Donato Coco – Director of Design (From Ferrari)
Dr. Robert Hentschel – Director of Lotus Engineering (From EDAG)
Paul Newsome – Director of Product Engineering (Jaguar/Land Rover)
Michael Och – Director of Operations (From VW)
Stephan Pathenschneider – Cheif Operating Officer (From Mercedes AMG)
Andreas Prillmann – Chief Commercial Officer (From Ferrari)
Andreas Schlegel – Director of Global Marketing (From Aston Martin)
Wolf Zimmermann – Chief Officer Vehicle Engineering (From Mercedes AMG)

Pictures’ Copyright
Lotus 
Categories
Cars

A new gladiator to arena: Lotus

British sports car manufacturer Lotus is trying to gain its position back. Proton owned (Lotus is owned by Proton, ugly truth!) revealed five (Esprit, Eterne, Elise, Elan and Elite) new models to compete with Italian and Germans and Aston Martin. After being away from the German vs. rest of the automotive companies gladiator games. Now with four new models Lotus is trying to enter the Colosseum.
What Lotus has done is a miracle, they revealed five different types of cars at the same time. We see this with Germans but Lotus is not that wealthy like Germans. Therefore I consider this as a great success. However sales may not be that successful! The CEO of Lotus declared that they are heading directly to Aston Martin, Ferrari, Porsche and Mercedes AMG territory. It is very easy to spell but extremely hard to achieve.
All these brands have their very royal and fanatic customers. People desire to have those brands and that’s a way to achieve their dreams. However Lotus is not a dream car anymore. I know for some people still a dream car like Pamela Anderson is a dream for people over 30 but new generation consider her as their mother! This is the same with Lotus. People don’t really know what really is Lotus.
I know that Lotus is excellent in handling and car engineering but trying to have a place in gladiator games is more than handling and engineering! Lotus has to create a dream but it won’t be very to achieve. I am sure some people will buy their new cars but Lotus should not have focused too many cars at the same time. Like Rolls-Royce, Lotus should have revealed news cars in a scheduled time frame.

Pictures’ Copyrights
Lotus