The second thing I noticed is that my speedo is over reading. At 70mph the speedo is reading around 80-82mph. This means my fuel consumption measurements have been a bit optomistic, making my average so far closer to 22mpg. I cruised up to Stoneleigh at pretty much 70mph all the way and fuel consumption was up to a real 27mpg.

The journey up was not much fun. 70mph equates to 6800rpm and the car is loud at this speed. It's actually quieter to cruise at a higher speed because there appears to be an intake resonation around this engine speed. It also rained several times on the way up but the aeroscreen directs everything onto my forehead and keeps the rest of me dry and the the inside of the car too. I stopped and put a helmet on after the first 30 miles which unfortunately makes things louder and the helmet itself also generates a lot of wind noise. The second issue I had was that of being too cold. It was quite cool at 7am in the morning and the windchill didn't help. I should have bought another layer of clothing with me. I thought I'd get to Stoneleigh on a full tank but it was not to be. About 10 miles out I had to divert to get to a petrol station with the Digidash reading 0% fuel. One the way back I had to stop about 20 miles from home so, 140 miles from a full tank seems to be about the limit.

I arrived as the show opened, at around 9.30am and kitcars were starting to queue to get in. The show itself was much like others years I've been. The halls have the kit manufacturers and outside is essentially a kit car focussed, giant car boot sale. If you are not building or planning to build a car then it might all seem a bit dull. Some of the quality is very high but, some of engineering I saw shocked me. Some of the cheaper seven-style cars looked quite scary in terms of engineering design and quality. Some of these are well known brands (which I won't name) and popular kits too.

The main part of the show of interest to me now is the clubs and fellow owners though. You get to see the various makes of cars from Caterham and Westfield to the really small kit producers. The Ford GT club was worth a visit. I'm also rather fond of the Grinnall 3-wheeler. The Dax owner's club seemed to be all about large chrome wheels .

I parked up on the JPSC stand and the turn out by the club was excellent. This picture was taken at 9.30am, when the show had just opened.

Along the front of the pitch were samples of all the cars designed by Jeremy Philips. I was dissappointed that the Sylva Spectre didn't make it this year. I was really looking forward to seeing this car.

This is the new RAW Fulcrum, based upon the Striker. The most favourable description that I can supply is that it is functional.

Later in the day, there were lots of cars on the stand and lots of people seemed to be interested in or currently building a Fury, Mojo, Striker, etc. It was great to chat to fellow owners and enthusiasts. There were three other Fury R1s on the stand too and it was good to see how others had done things. One had the luxury of a windscreen and soft-top and another even had doors!

The weather had picked up a bit when I left at 2pm so I drove back without a helmet all the way. I also went a little bit faster to make the drive more interesting. The fuel consumption actually improved at this higher speed. My ears were ringing into the night.

I wanted to do this trip to see how what the car was like to drive longer distances. The Tillett seats are comfortable but the foot positioning is not ideal for long distances. The noise makes long journeys hard work and I couldn't see myself wanting to drive down to Le Mans in it. I really need to finish my airbox and another attempt at repacking the exhaust might be in order too.

12^th May

From the front this car looks remarkable like an S1 Lotus Elise, due mainly to the 'ears' forming the front splitter. The most obvious ommission is the lack of radiator and associated vents. This is kind of ironic, since this car is in many ways closer to how the Elise was meant to be, than the car that was launched. The early Elise concept was very light-weight, mid-engined and doorless too. You have to hand it to Lotus though, the use of an aluminium tub chassis was an inspired choice.

From this front side view, the relationship to the Fury is obvious. I particularly like the ultra low-profile wheel arches on the front. It's hard to appreciate from these pictures just how low this car must be.

The rear is the bit I struggle most with in this design. The rear bit doesn't seem to match but, that might be because I'm expecting to see a Fury rear end on the car. Even so, the handling is going to be fantastic. In bike-engined form this is a sub 450Kg car and my personal preferrence would be for a 1400cc engine from the Kawasaki ZX-14 motorbike.

You can track progress on the Spectre Sportscars website.