Felicity and I had a great morning out this morning, chasing the first stage of Women's Tour, which is part of the official Santos Tour Down Under race program. Its great to see women coming to the fore in cycling here in Adelaide. We took the BMW Z3 and the Audi TT up to Woodside for the start of the first of 4 races in the Women's Tour. The weather was perfect, both for open top motoring, and for cycling, low 20's, clear skies and a gentle breeze.

The start of the stage, as the women set off for Murray Bridge, was fast and powerful with a tight bunch flying down Woodside's main street, with numerous police in cars and on motorcycles running rolling road closures around the race.  Here's a quick video of the women flying past us in Woodsides main street.

We then took some back roads to catch the race a bit further along, arriving just in time to see a still tightly bunched race along Nairne Road. Then back in the cars to try to catch the King (Queen?) of the Mountain, a hill sprint, just outside of Nairne. Alas, we were too late, the women had obviously kept up a blistering pace and the officials were just packing up the finish tape as we arrived!

On Sunday evening the women have a Criterium down at Rymill Park, and we will be there to cheer them on.

Please, when you are out driving in the Hills, look out for cyclists, be patient and give them space. Share the Road!

I figure I need a place where I can just sit back and chat about whats going on with our cars, things we've seen or done in the Adelaide Hills and just anything really. So here's my first post on our new Blog Page. Enjoy:)

I've been running our little Sports car rental business for just over a year now, and when it came to Christmas, it was really the first year for as long as I can remember that I haven't had a least one office Christmas party to go to. But with just me, and some help from time to time from Felicity and the kids, well, there was no office Christmas party at Adelaide Hills Touring-other than all the usual wonderful family Christmas stuff. Welcome to the world of small business I guess!

Looking back, its been an amazing year. I'd had a corporate career, always as an employee in a large corporate environment. For a number of reasons I decided it was time for a change, and after quite a bit of quiet contemplation came up with the idea of a classic car rental business. Initially thinking towards large, luxurious saloons I bought a Mercedes 500SEL as the first car in the fleet. And then started hunting around for feedback about what sort of experience might appeal to people. 

As a result of that, the Mercedes was sold, and the hunt was on for some fun, reasonably priced and fun to drive sports convertibles. Very soon we had our initial small fleet, a Mazda MX5, BMW Z3 and Porsche Boxster.

I made a bit of a business plan with some ideas about how we might do in our first year.  And amazingly the business has exceeded those initial projections by around 50% for the year. Website traffic has been growing every month, as have bookings and revenue. We had one shock on the expenses side early on when the Porsche decided it needed a new engine (Ouch!)

One year in, we have 7 lovely sports cars, and planning on buying another couple within the next few months. As a fledgling business, we've hit our first birthday in good shape. Its been fun, I've learned more than I can remember, and it has been great to see our customers come back with great smiles on their faces, having added a very unique and special experience to their day out, holiday, wedding, anniversary, birthday, engagement or other occasion.