Post the 2021 event at Anglesey whilst driving back I had a few thoughts. Mostly about food and rain but eventually my mind wandered onto ; How do “we” raise Exiges.com profile?
As a club we exist in a niche, and a somewhat dwindling niche as cars are getting older and sadly I think so are we! There were some exiges.com long term faithful at the event that sadly for one reason or another didnt meet and some newer blood ( Ill count myself in there ) there as well.
This got me thinking ; what do we want from exiges.com? Are we looking for expansion in terms of memberships? Are we looking to affiliate with other clubs ? Are we happy just the way we are?
Does anyone want to help raise our profile ? As in organise events, a shop , meets , anything?
If we are happy just the way things are , then say so.
I only inherited this place so I dont understand everything about its members. I just know its an absolute treasure trove of info and documented history.
We are more than happy to host an Event / Meet at our spot in the future. Our carpark can fit quite a few cars in (as long as the other units are not open and have cars out)
Sorry I couldn’t make Anglesey it clashed with a family trip this year, I’d of liked to of supported and met more members.
From my perspective something I appreciate about Exige’s is it’s “friendly” probably because it isn’t too broad or too generic. I wouldn’t want it to go “seloc”. It’s a small community and everyone is respectful and enthusiastic and knowledgeable. But I do appreciate the “niche” bit, its a small sub culture car. It would be nice to attend more events as a group, but in terms of your efforts to modernise and freshen the forum I think we’re universally grateful to you. And if Exige’s is this forum and a couple of get together where practical I’m grateful for that and certainly don’t worry I’m missing out.
Thanks for the kind words - I am not looking for a pat on the back. Just to see what people want from this place. It sort of runs itself but I dont know if that what folks want so you feedback is great.
When the S1 Elise and Exige were introduced it introduced an exciting new era for Lotus, loads of new enthusiastic owners and a vibrant community that added to us older Lotus guys.
Lotus never really grasped what they created with the S1 and imho the Lotus tinternet community has been in freefall since. SELOC undoubtedly, the most popular site is now but a shadow of its former self.
Going forward I cant be of assistance unfortunately, but the vast knowledge contained in the archive of this site is absolutely invaluable.
As a long term Exiger I apologise for not saying hello at Anglesey, I was too cold, soggy and shivering to make my way down the pits, Caterhams are silly in a monsoon.
I do think we need to attract more s3 owners, the s1 base is tiny and many of us now rarely use our S1 cars. I think myself and Ben are the only old timers, now with Tfl, who still have our Exiges.
You probably need to think about how you want to be different to Seloc. I think a focus on track activity, solid and informed advice and polite management of keyboard warriors would be a good starting place. Advice on seloc ranges from excellent too…
Andy, thanks for keeping it going, though I am one of those whose lotus activity has dwindled.
I persisted with the constant sign-up issues (pre-Andy’s takeover) because it was clear that Exiges.com had a wealth of technical archive that the other forums simply don’t have. I think some of those ‘legacy’ authors are still lurking, but there’s much less new turf anymore in terms of technical stuff.
Obviously we have people like myself, Lee, Andy, etc who are actively ‘working on’ and using an S2 - but very little of that is new info, we’re just standing on the shoulders of people who did this stuff 10 years ago. That said, the modifying ‘scene’ for the cars has changed slightly since then, particulary with the affordability of aftermarket ECU’s and a few contenders for ‘performance pack’ type upgrades coming to market - I’m seeing a bit of resurgence in people modifying the S2 platform at least, so if we could capture more than that and log a few more projects - that would be good. (I’m glaring at YOU, lurkers, I know you’re out there )
Attracting S3’s is also a no brainer, there are more of them, it’s a current(ish) platform and people are starting to fiddle around with them now.
It’s clear that the physical meetup element is a very strong part of exiges.com which I as a newbie underestimated. The number of long standing friendships is very apparent when an event like Anglesey happens (even if conditions and the rules meant mingling was difficult) and the takeup for the Caffeine and Machine meet looks to be very popular… so hopefully we can capitalise on that a bit once restrictions calm down.
A chap in my village runs a small trackday organisation company, they focus on pretty small/corporate and club events. Predominantly at Blyton because it’s our local, and it’s cheap - but I could setup an intro if we think some more club trackdays could work? Being realistic I think we’d need to do it in collaboration with another club, but it’s always an option.
On that idea, I believe you can rent the Curborough sprint circuit for very modest amounts. Maybe a few social sporting events are a USP.? Also, though it was not an Exiges event I think Paul and Lot did us proud at little effort or financial risk. Maybe you can pick more than one of his events in the year where Exigers can attend and meet potential new members.
Events could be the way. The Seloc Lotus in the Peak event is the highlight of their year.
When you took over Andy I did consider suggesting becoming affiliated with another group, ideally TLF. I’ve no idea if Bibs would be up for this but as a forum intended solely for a car that is soon to be out of production the risk is that exiges.com dwindles further.
I am a long term member but no longer have an Exige (Evora now). I would have attended the trackday as a spectator had the covid regs allowed but sadly not.
Has the FB page helped? I rarely see anything posted there and I was concerned it would deflect posting on here when it first started. Maybe its time to have a chat with Bibs?
The exiges.com FB does generate some traffic. It certainly doesn’t appear to detract from here. I think FB algorithms don’t help show our “stories” on FB.
I don’t post all that frequently on there - just enough to try and keep people engaged.
What would we look to gain from collaboration with another forum? That’s not a passive aggressive question btw, just trying to see how it would play out.
I can’t see another Lotus themed forum generating any traffic to this one, but I don’t know much about TLF community, if they have meets/trackdays/etc that we can tag along to - then that would make sense to me.
The regional groups are worth integrating with too if possible, NYLOC, MLOC, NORLOG etc all have pretty active communities as far as I’m aware - but probably all ‘struggling’ compared to their glory days - so getting these like minded clubs together for semi-exclusive events has got to be the way forward.
Selfishly I’ve always liked how Exiges felt different to all the other forums out there, a close knit community.
Moving forwards, I think tying up with another forum for track days would be a good move.
As far as meetings I’m more than happy to assist where possible. I know ‘we’ as a community have been relatively spread out across the country and meets were centred around track days.
I’m happy to push the Instagram side of things a bit more too….
I’d really question why you would link up with TLF, and thats meant in the nicest possible way. they have a reasonable s3 community but since getting rid of an S3 and coming out that particular area, TLF generally seems to be people ranting about centre right politics, some Esprit chat and a bit of v6 platform chat.
Anyway as to attracting S3 owners - in general they are getting into modding (I still get lots of notes from folk about my build thread) so getting a few builds on here would be good, maybe getting Seriously Dave to showcase some of his power stages could be good, and push via social media to bring in users.
The other thing is v6 community is quite into trackdays, so bringing them into Exiges days would be good. I’m not sure why, but lots of the v6 guys don’t use LOT (yes I know some do) - so that could be a good opportunity. TLF do very few events, their regional areas are dead, and I can’t remember a single trackday event by TLF since 2017 - so its a gap in the market.
One strange thing I have noticed is folk read threads on here but message me elsewhere. So I get lots of questions about detailing, build thread etc, but they all come via Instagram and SELOC, but so many of them state they saw the content on Exiges.com - so I am stumped why they go to a different forum or platform to message me. but thats what happens for some reason. Certainly pushing via IG is a big opportunity for Exiges
Not just me then, I post an update to my thread - and usually get a number of follow up questions/comments or answers to my questions via WhatsApp/Instagram/FB/etc. I know Andy has made it much easier to register on exiges.com, but there’s definitely a laziness when it comes to forum usage nowadays - people just can’t be arsed it seems. *
It’s not just Exiges either, I get similar from my PH threads.
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I even had a customer ask me for ‘thread updates’ via MS Teams a few weeks ago
We have an active IG account ( thanks to a very helpful chap! )
I’ll see if I can get a way to integrate logins with insta.
I’ll be honest I am not a fan of the software we use here but everything else is a paywall.
Does anyone want to “come on board” and be a exiges.con official trackday events organiser? I can’t offer any perks or rewards. It would purely be for fun.
Its very odd, but its a daily thing nowadays. Detailing I get as it very much lends itself to IG, but asking about a radiator or how to take a clam off makes less sense
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