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Weekly Motor Fix: the little Lotus from the big screen

7 September, 2015

 

Unlike our more hipsterish brothers over at NZ Performance Car, elderly classic car editors don’t often get to the movies. So you’ll have to forgive us for mentioning a movie that, although it came out a few years back, we only just saw for the first time a few days ago — Red 2. Well, actually, we really only watched the bit with the Lotus Exige S. And while the subsequent car chase was very good — taking full advantage of the Exige’s compact size to duck under barriers, dive between the axles of a container truck, and allow a spot of seriously cool drive-by gunplay — what really caught our attention was the scene where Dame Helen Mirren actually swept aboard the Lotus.

If you’ve ever crawled into the cramped cabin of an Exige — as we at New Zealand Classic Car have many times — you’ll instantly be aware that a spot of ‘movie magic’ was quite obviously involved during the filming of the aforementioned scene.

Our seasoned editor is almost 10 years younger than Helen Mirren — who was knocking on the door of 70 when she appeared in Red 2 — but he struggles to cram himself into an Exige with any degree of dignity, as can be seen in our photograph (an image that also explains why he rarely, if ever, puts the hood up on the editorial Elise).

Photo: sourced

Alright, Helen Mirren does appear to be rather better preserved than our editor (not to mention a whole lot better looking), but are we really expected to believe that an over-aged pensioner film star can demonstrate the flexibility of a teenager by diving into the cockpit of an Exige with such remarkable split-second speed?!

Ah, if only we could all utilize jump cuts to cover up those awkward, real-life moments!

Classics on the green

16 October, 2026

Many pretenders vie for the title, but the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance gets my vote as the biggest thing since sliced bread.
The 71st edition of the world’s pre-eminent and best-known concours event featured 28 classes, judged by a 180-strong jury, which also chose the recipients of 26 special awards.
The size of the event, the number of visitors, and, most mind-numbingly, the sheer number of amazing cars, is almost overwhelming. There are so many quality cars to gaze upon, and so many people gazing at those cars, that it is almost impossible to cover everything.
Notable among the many attractions were the centenary celebrations of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an elegant Talbot-Lago Grand Sport, Hermann Graber’s Swiss-bodied cabriolets and coupés, the jewels of Otto Vu Italian V8s, early Alfa Romeos, Lincoln and its centenary, and cars with unorthodox propulsion systems.

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.