Izu Skyline touring on the Emira

On May 3rd (of 2026) a few friends, all of us Lotus Emira owners, went on a weekend drive through the Izu Skyline road. We stopped on the west side of the Izu peninsula and had lunch at Toi Beach, then stopped by the Nishi Amagi Highlands Ranch House on the way back before heading back.

Initially this was going to be a weekend touring organized by one of the Lotus owners' club in central Japan. There were going to be 50+ cars coming from Nagoya and surrounding areas, but they canceled the event on their side because of the bad weather on the side. The weather looked fine on our side, so we decided to go follow the route they had prepared anyway.

The meeting point was The Mentai Park Izu very early in the morning. This is about a 2-3 hour drive from home, so in order to avoid the morning traffic I decided to drive there at night and try and catch some sleep in the car. That didn't work: turns out that the Emira seats are fine for a quick nap at some random service area on the road, but they're too uncomfortable when you try to have some real sleep.

We gathered four cars at the Mentai Park: three Lotus Emira and a BMW. The BMW owner (Stig) also has an Emira, but at the time it was at the workshop, so he came on his BMW instead. From there we headed for the Izu Skyline road. This is a 40km long toll road running North-South across the mountains in the Izu Peninsula, and the views are beautiful from up there. Despite the bad weather in the Nagoya side, the weather on our side was excellent. We headed to the Heda Parking to met another member of our usual groupm who was coming in his Emira too. While we were there we met another Lotus owner in a black Lotus Elise, who was going to join the original event but then decided to go on the same drive on his own when the original event was canceled.

From there we headed to Toi Beach and had lunch at Terrasse Orange Toi next to the Matsubara Park. After lunch we went up another mountain pass to the Nishi Amagi Highlands Ranch House, where we met another Emira owner. There we had some snacks (mostly ice cream and coffee) before going our own separate ways. Some of us took the western road down the mountain. This turned out to be a bad idea, because it was a very narrow, dangerous road with the pavement in bad condition. Nothing happened, but when I got back home I noticed that air pressure was low in one of the rear wheels of my car: I had some kind of nail or screw in the tire, causing a slow puncture. I suspect that this happened during the descent from the Ranch House, but I can't know for sure. In any case, I had to replace the tire a few days later. 😅