When planning my 2012 trip I had been talking to various
Lotus owners along my intended route, with a view to meeting up with them. I
had originally planned to travel through Vancouver Island, and was chatting to
Dave Lieffertz who lived in Chermainus and had a Series 1 Elise. However, for cost and weather reasons, I
eventually decided to skip the ferries and Vancouver Island and drive up on the
mainland, so I never met Dave face to face.
When planning this current trip with Vancouver Island once again in the
route, I contacted Dave and we planned
to meet up for a quick coffee as I came
through. When we reached Chermainus, I
couldn’t get through on his phone, so we drove to the café where he said he
might be. On walking in there were
several people inside, so I asked the waitress if she knew a guy named Dave Lieffertz,
not for one moment imaging she would. “Oh, that’s him right there” she said,
pointing to a nearby table. Not
believing my luck, I went over, and after a couple of seconds of disbelief, he
realised who I was, and we joined him and fellow musician friend Jennifer Jade Kerr (www.jenniferjadekerr.com) for coffee, and a great chat catching
up with all things Lotus as well as everything else one chats about on a first
meeting. But soon Jennifer needed to
leave to get on with some things, so Dave asked if I would like to go over to
see his car – Currently in a workshop having the radiator fluid changed. Obviously I said yes……………………..
So off we went – And 5 minutes later we were at Ennerdale
Engineering, (“Purveyors of the Horseless Carriage”) and on entering the drive were surrounded by
an extraordinary mix of mostly British or European cars. With the odd American
one thrown in for good measure.
Bentleys. SAAB’s, and MGB, a VW Kombi Westfalia, a Pontiac Fiero, Range
Rovers, minis, and in the workshop I spied a couple of Caterhams, a Mercedes
SL, and there, amongst them all, was Dave’s green 1996 S1 Elise sitting on the
hoist being worked on. But the whole
place could easily have been in the middle of Surrey or Sussex, with wooden
barn style buildings, and everywhere garage signs and logos – Many from long
ago – It was like being in the middle of a wonderful apparition !! What a
fantastic place !
http://www.super7cars.com/about%20us.html
Initially I spent time going through Dave’s Elise with
him, pointing out things that maybe he didn’t know about. Also saw he still had a red clutch hose (a
known early Elise problem) – But then, in the cool of British Columbia it
probably doesn’t cause too any problems !
After maybe an hour of chatting about his car and my car, the owner,
David Saville Peck returned after being out for a while – And almost as soon as
we started talking, it was like we had known each other for years. Suffice it to say that David has not only
raced for many years at quite an elite level (like Can Am in the glory Can Am
days), but has also built his own cars, and around his office and workshop and
adjacent house, he has many relevant models and photos and memorabilia from
many years of racing. I won’t bore you
all with the details, but after Dave Lieffertz had to leave at about 2 pm to
pick up his kids from school, David Peck and I didn’t stop talking till about 6
pm !! It was raining quit heavily all
afternoon which didn’t make Janet and I any keener to get on the road to go and
find a campsite, so when David and I finally came up for air it was decided
that we would stay overnight at his house – Which is part of the garage
property. By this time we were starving,
having missed lunch, so we took off in David’s car, with Dino his dog for
company, and went to the Saltair (English style) pub in Chermainus for a beer
or three and some tea. I can strongly
recommend the Pub for anyone passing through, and the proprietor is
quite friendly too – He hails from Perth, Western Australia originally !!
After a good feed and a few ales we went back to David’s
house and while Janet went up to bed at about 9 pm, I think it was about 1 am
before David and I manage to solve all the problems of the world and head off
for some sleep ! A very pleasant
evening, and as I say, I felt as though I had known David all my life. His English background, connections with
Canterbury (where my sister worked for some time), he went to Bryanston school,
which was in the same group as my school so we used to compete at all sports,
and many other coincidences too numerous to mention.
On the next morning, David had gone to work by the time
we surfaced, but he had left us everything ready for breakfast – Including delicious
home grown eggs and VERY tasty bacon. It
all just topped off a great (and totally unexpected) 24 hours. We spent some time wandering around his yard,
finding all sorts of mechanical treasures out there, in varying state of
disrepair. Jags lined up under tarps,
with just their Jaguar bonnet emblems poking through where they had worn holes;
a couple of 924 Porsches; Mk 10 Jag, Mk 7 (?) Jag, Daimler 240, a couple of
Volvo Amazons – And away at the side of the horse / chicken area, a Haflinger ! Then inside are some of the cars David has
for sale, as well as his personal collection – A one owner Mk 1 Jag, an
immaculate Datsun 240 (?) Z, a nice E Class Merc almost identical to Janet’s at
home – And then a couple of rather nice cars of David’s – A BMW 2000 Touring (together
with all original paperwork and sales dockets) which he bought new in UK and
shipped over, a beautiful and original convertible Dino (the FIAT sports style,
not the Dino Ferrari style), plus a couple of others. Also being worked on was a second 1997/8 Mk 1
Elise which had blown its turbo’d K series engine and was being rebuilt, and a
Hayabusa engined Westfield (ie not one of his cars !!) that was having
problems. (David is the sole global agent
for motorcycle engined LH drive Caterham’s, although his primary
market is obviously the USA and Canada.)
Anyway, at about 11 am we finally stopped talking and
left David to get on with his work ! The
original plan was to go over to the west coast of VI for a night in order to
visit Ucluelet and Tofino and eat some of their monster scallops. However, with a day lost in Chermainus, there
really wasn’t enough time to do that without rushing because we had to be in
Port Hardy by 4 pm on Saturday to catch our next ferry. So we decided to just skip Ucluelet and
instead enjoy a leisurely drive up the east coast, and it was the right
decision. We just wandered up the coast,
stopping in various places en route for a cup of coffee, or a look at something
interesting.
Not far out of Chermainus, at David’s suggestion, we went
for a walk on the beach in Rathtrevor Provincial Park which was great, with lots of
driftwood left on the beach. One tree trunk was over 20 metres long (tall ?),
and when these are floating in the ocean, they are a massive danger to small
boats and yachts, as they would pierce a hull easily. A very real danger in waters around here.
As the day wore on, after driving through Nanaimo, we
decided to stop near Campbell River, where there is Elk Falls Provincial Park
and camping. After a quick look at the
Elk Falls, we went to set up camp in a beautiful wooded area that was very
reminiscent of the California Red Woods, and right beside the Campbell
River. It looked a bit like rain so we
put up the flysheet for the pop top for the first time, although it turned out
that we didn’t need it. But it was cool,
so I lit a fire using wet kindling from around our site and pages from a
camping book for US States which we are not going to visit on this trip (like
Georgia, California etc), and eventually got it going by using my old Boy Scout
skills !! At about that time, the local
Ranger came round, gave me a serve for using wood off the forest floor – And
then sold me a box of wood that looked suspiciously similar for $7 !! Anyway, eventually had a nice fire to keep
warm, although all my clothes smell like a bonfire now ! But a very pleasant last night on Vancouver
Island.
Afraid I have had a computer glitch and can't get some of these photos to work. If I can get an IT whizz to retrieve them, I will put them up, because they are fascinating !!
What is left of the Pics here :https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0005VancouverIsland?authkey=Gv1sRgCMaq_7K52Mz9OQ#
Afraid I have had a computer glitch and can't get some of these photos to work. If I can get an IT whizz to retrieve them, I will put them up, because they are fascinating !!
What is left of the Pics here :
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