A Sunday drive with Essex Region involves one of those dastardly Tulip maps. We love them here because they are actually easier to use than a standard map once you get the hang of it. We had a 50 mile route of mainly quiet roads round the top end of the county, finishing with a carvery lunch at Rivenhall Oaks - excellent value at £9.95.
Our route started in a convoluted way so that we could drive to the premises of Simon Furlonger Specialist Cars. My promised group of 30 had a large number of last minute dropouts which was a real shame. The showroom manager, Paul Stevenson had put on a super display, taking a chunk out of his Sunday to open up specially for us.
As you can see from the photos there were some tantalising vehicles on display, not all for sale. But you could buy a Ford GT (thank you Len for "modelling" that one), a Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster, and a Mercedes C63 AMG Black edition once driven by Clarkson on Top Gear.
That is of course aside from a large number of Ferraris. There were two rather nice 328 GTB's that caught my eye and a rare 430 "Scud" in blue. Others preferred a 458 Speciale but it was sadly not for sale.
I would like to say a big thank you to Paul for his efforts and the generous helpings of tea, coffee and biscuits too. He did hint that we could do this as a bigger group some time again so perhaps we can arrange something in 2017. Incidentally, Furlonger has the UK franchise for Singer cars and that's definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Greg