hello from Florida

howdy, I am John Rowland. My wife Laurie and I are the USA reps for the Elf/Hornet Register, if there is something we can help you with, send us an email and we will see what we can do. The USA needs more Elfs and Hornets, so we have brought four over from England, one 1968 Elf, three 1969 Elfs. We love them all but really four is too many, I suppose one day we will let a couple of them go away to new homes. We have two favorites which we seem to drive the most, the 68 and the brown 69 which is automatic.

Your "fleet" of Elf's sounds great. Have you any photos?

As you wish,

Very nice Do they have names? Gotta have names!

They look great! That Florida sunshine shows them off a treat

names? Ooops, I certainly never named them, was I supposed to do that? I know that when one of the Elfs breaks, I have called it names, does that count?
Actually, that sounds like a question for the clever artistic type, so I will ask the wife. She is a graphics art whiz (she made the Elf/Hornet logo at the top of the page).

We have 3 Minis too, so maybe we should name them like the 7 Dwarves. Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Sleazy, whatever.

Here is a Mini that I get to drive now and then...



This was taken in February at the HSR race weekend at Palm Beach International Raceway, I had a good battle with the TR4 on Saturday. Photo taken by Larry Van Scoy, Larry wrote an article for Victory Lane magazine about the event, I was not only mentioned in the article (wow) but there is a pic of my car on the cover (wow again). I bought copies for both of my friends.

The sable brown Elf is the automatic, the Yukon gray is the 68. We had these two out last week to attend a hotrod cruise which is held near where we live on the first Saturday of the month. The blue Elf was once featured in Practical Classics in a comparison with a Wolseley, I have taken the doors off that one to fix some rusty bits here and there. Hope to have it back on the road soon. The damask red Elf is pining away inside an enclosed trailer for now, because the shop is full.

John, Do you ever make it to any Mini Meets or shows? It would be nice to have another Elf at some events. I'm getting tired of always competing with the same car at every meet I take the Elf to. Hope to meet you some time.

hi.. the red elf is registered in bournemouth in the uk with the ru suffix in the reg, this is near where i live so see a few ru cars regards martin ps shes a long way from home. by the way is there any bmc farina cars in florida? same as the one next to or hornet in my pic

Martin, in Florida, one is not required to have license (registration) plates front and back, they are only required on the back. Front plates are vanity plates, people put whatever they want on the front of vehicle. Lots of funny plates, or NASCAR insignia, or college football team logo, something like that. We decided to just leave the UK registration plates on there. We had excellent luck in purchasing these cars, we found friendly sellers who were willing to deal with a foreign buyer. We used Phoenix to collect and ro-ro ship the cars for us. The first one shipped to Jacksonville, we had the next three shipped to Port Canaveral.

Red, we don't get to many Mini meets. The farther it is to an event, the less likely we can go, it becomes a Big Deal to arrange/plan/coordinate. So the few we could get to would be within a couple hours drive from home.

Laurie's parents are classic car collectors (not Minis) so we have joined with them at non-Mini classic car events, we went to the Lake Mirror Classic in Lakeland a couple times, one year with an Elf. We did a week of zooming around the North Carolina mountains in the Highlands Classic driving an Alfa, and they arranged for us to join them in the Colorado Grand one year, wow what an event.

We did go to a British car/bike show here in Jupiter two years ago, and we attended the Gold Coast British Sports Car Club event in Lake Worth three years ago. We went to Spring Thing in Kissimmee, 2005 I think. We brought about 50 squirt guns and gave them to the classic Mini people, squirted people all over town during the rally. All in all, I was not too impressed with Spring Thing, I am a classic-Mini fan and just can't see the point of including the BMW MINIs. Last year we met up with the Classic Minis group in Melbourne for St. Patrick's day. Those guys are crazy, just like us, so it was a blast. We ended up sneaking through the barricades onto the main street, and lining up for the big town parade as if we were an official part of the show.

My wife and I both work, and she has two monsters entering teen years. Travelling to car events gets complicated. I hope to get the race car to two races each year, but I never do, I might make it to one race every two years. So when we can do it, we try to make a car event or race trip into a little vacation trip, maybe travel to an event or track we have never been to before, meet some new people, try to make some new friends.

So expect me when you see me.

Car names...Laurie reminded me that we once considered getting four personalized plates saying Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Moe. We never did.
We did think the sable brown Elf looked like a pint of Guinness, so its plate says GOOD4YA, inspired by old Guinness ads. Nobody here gets it, too obscure.

J.R.

I recognise that last one! That picture was on my front garden! Glad to know she's ended up at a good home - I had found out that she was no longer taxed or SORNed , which meant either scrapped (too good for that) or exported. Glad it's the latter!

You can find the pics of the resto work I did at this page of my website. Stay in touch!

hello Chris,

Thank you for posting that link. I looked at all the pics, you did a lot of work getting it back together.

My wife has given me permission to make one of the Elfs into a budget track day car, the red car probably needs the most body work of our four, so that will probably be the one that gets put on steroids. My first step was to modify a set of Honda Civic disc brakes for it, like Joltfreak shows on his website, I got them to fit inside 10" wheels but did not like the amount of wheel offset. So I scrapped the Hondas and modified some Fiesta brakes. I reviewed all the Fiesta brake articles out there, but all those used the Cooper S hubs, rotors, drive flanges, and CV joints/axles. I am stubborn and cheap, so I didn't do any of that, I made my brakes fit with stock Elf drum hubs, flanges, and driveshafts. My Fiesta brakes don't fit in stock 10" wheels but Minilites will clear them. I have now switched over to working on the blue car, hope to have it ready to repaint soon. The red car is in storage for a while.

I have some 1275 parts which I must save for the race car, so the Elf's 998 engine will be modified for track day use. Since 2002 I have been collecting BMW K-bike cylinder heads and engines whenever I find them, now its time to actually build something. It looks like I will be able to bore the 998 block to fit the BMW K100 pistons on 998 rods. I do not intend to turbo it, I want to get around 100hp, enough for fun but not too much, not so much that parts start breaking.

I see you are a guitar guy, nice axes. Because I do electronics for my job, friends ask me to repair their broken electronic stuff, so through the years I have done a lot of guitar amp repairs. A few years ago I started acquiring and fixing broken guitars and amps when the kids started taking lessons. Guitars and amps are like Minis, I can't seem to stop at just one so now I have a pile of electric guitars and amps, even though I can't play. I took a couple lessons, I can twang a couple chords, but I am hopeless at playing a tune. Maybe someday.

I don't mean to clutter up the EHR forum with non EH stuff, but perhaps this might be interesting. If this next bit is intrusive, let me know and I will remove it.

I never met a tool I didn't want to own, now I have a lathe and a mill which helps greatly in fabricating bits. But machine tools are handy for fixing guitars too. Here is one I bought off Ebay, the previous owner had attempted a repair with glue and oversize screws:


Here is a shot I took after beginning the repair.


Today it plays nicely (when somebody other than me plays it).

Interesting you should be looking to make the red Elf into a track day car; the guy who bought it off me was thinking of using it for classic rallying. I suspect the hydro suspension went against that, I reckon you'd need to convert to dry - or coils - for racing. Hydro gives a lovely ride, but does lose a little in the handling; nothing you would worry about for road use, but I wouldn't want to do track speeds on it!

I'm no great guitarist, though I can bash out a few tunes competently enough to perform the odd song on stage. I'm reasonably adept on the bass though. I just got to the age where I can afford to have good gear! And like you say, they're addictively collectable (guitarists know it as GAS - gear acquisition syndrome!) I don't quite recognise that particular guitar - something Les Paul-ish but not quite? My eldest daughter is the real muso - well singer anyway, in an upcoming rock band - Inner Eden, also Hanging Valleys

that one is a DeArmond M-65. These were made by a Korean company, hired by Guild (which owned the DeArmond brand) to make a cheaper Bluesbird, and some hollow bodies, and a line of low-cost bolt neck solidbodies in the LP/Bluesbird style. However, they did it too well, the best of the Korean DeArmonds were excellent players, and they were not expensive. The bolt neck versions used cheaper components and wood, made in Indonesia, they aren't great but they are good value guitars. A couple years later, Fender bought Guild, and since they didn't need a line of low-cost guitars that were better than the Squiers and the MIM Fenders, they dumped the DeArmond brand guitars.

meanwhile, back to Elfs and Hornets...

(belatedly!) welcome to our little forum John and Laurie,

hope you are both well - the cars are looking good!

Alastair