Mini 50 International Mini Meet Cofton Park Birmingham

Firstly may I start by thanking everyone who managed to make it to the event. I hope you all enjoyed the show as much as I did.
Big thank you to Jason for his creative art work with the E&H Logo on canvas, Ray for bringing along the E&H banner and other club promotion posters, Tony for some rare and unusual fact sheets and Eduard Preiswerk for his journey from Switzerland.

The weather was just perfect, 2 days of warm sunny cloudless blue skies. One of the visitors had some major gearbox troubles and stripped his gearbox down on the Saturday and was on our stand on the Sunday. A feat in itself but Michael is from Germany and will be travelling back home to Dortmund in his Elf in the next day or so. Unbelievable!
We had 13 Elf and Hornets in a long line today with Gordon AKA Catmint, Frank McKee and his son Wallace from Northern Ireland and other members from around the UK (sorry for not mentioning all your names).
We have signed up new members from Mexico, Italy, Netherlands and Northern Ireland and from what I can gather, Eduard was interviewed yesterday evening by a film crew making a documetary on our booted Mini variant. I don't know anymore but will try to find out and report back.

I won't go rattling on but this was a great weekend and I'm sure other members will post some images on the forum and add a few words.

With the success of this weekend, various members expressed an interest to either hold our own Elf and Hornet national rally if not next year then certainly 2011 to celebrate the 50th year of the first prototype cars. If this doesn't attract sufficient interest, then how about making an appearance at one of the larger National Mini shows and ask the organisers to feature the Elf and Hornet. If any members are interested or have some thoughts or ideas then lets open a debate.

Andrew

Thank you Andrew for organising the Stand. I think it was the only International Stand in the show (the only one I saw anyway)
It was nice to be able to put faces to the names of members of the forum!
I agree with you to discuss the possibility of a National Rally for the Elf/Hornet register and I think it is a great idea.
Sarah has asked me to organise a Camping week end in Wales next year which I will endeavour if enough interest. Will keep you informed on that.
Photos of the show to follow later today as I am still Stratford at the moment.
Cheers
Tony

Many thanks to Andrew for all of his hard work in ensuring that we had a top day at Mini 50 on Sunday (I'm sure he did just as well on Saturday but I was only there for the Sunday!) A particular big thank you to him for arranging a slot on the Longbridge Classic Mini Club Stand (next door) for Tricia and her Designer mini.

Our stand looked fantastic with 13 cars at one point and a good mixture of Elf's and Hornets. I think Tony is right, I think we were the only multi-nation stand, which was great.

I was only thinking myself along the lines of a National Rally for our variants would be a good shout for next year, why don't we approach Dave Hollis at British Mini Club and see if they will feature our cars at Himley Hall next year? Failing that, Gaydon would be a good shout.

I think somewhere Central in the country would be fairer for all UK based members, but maybe if we are trying to attract a large gathering from across the waters, maybe down south on the coast somewhere? Would be interesting to get everyone's thoughts, but I guess we might have to act soon, as next years shows are already well under way in the planning.

The only downside to the weekend was that Big Al was not able to be there, as he would have loved seeing our stand so well represented, but I'm sure he was there in spirit!

I'll get some pictures up as soon as I get chance!

Thanks again Andrew!

Jase

i wish i had been there - but someone has to keep london's buses running!

very well done andrew and i'm glad everyone had a good weekend.

maybe we could have 2 rallies? bromley pageant seems usually the best for us down-southers (and not too far from the coast) and another in the midlands? carry on discussing.....

Just got home - had a great time, met Tony, Jase & Tricia, and just disappointed not to have managed to grab a chat with Eduard, who wrote to me when I first got my Elf to tell me that he thought (correctly) that it was a 67 car not the 69 it's registered as.

My youngest daughter's Clubby was parked just 20 metres from the EHR on the Clubman 40 display!

I have to say a lot of fun went on after the day visitors had gone - there was an impromptu cavalcade around the site last night, and the marshals tried in vain to stop it! Even a squadron of 7PCSOs could do no maor than make sure they kept the speed down! All good harmless fun, and we sat up drinking & chatting with the Clubman Estate Register and a few random scotsmen until about 1.30am.

The overall organisation was a bit hit & miss, but it all turned out well enough. And we spent far too much money on bits for our Minis!

(sorry about the copyright logo, but it is put on automatically when I resize)

Good to meet folks and have a bit of a chat (have you still got a voice Andrew ???)

re next year or 2011, how about we start a new thread

Here are my pics of the day.....

Some of the stand....








Jase

More pics of Mini 50/IMM...

Here are the 12 cars other than mine who appeared on stand....
(Note Tricia's Diamond White Mini Designer behind on the Longbridge Classic Mini Club Stand!)



(Sorry Andrew! Couldn't get a decent shot of yours because of the regalia!)





(I hope he got back to Dortmund alright with that rebuilt gearbox!)



(Always a pleasure to see "Humphrey"!)









(Think I managed to recruit him!)

and finally...

(Moi!)

A fine selection, I'm sure you will all agree...
Jase

More pics....

Here are some of the other Elf's and Hornets we saw scattered around....









(This one won Best Elf/Hornet in the concours)











and a couple that made it in spirit......




Jase

discoman41 wrote: I think Tony is right, I think we were the only multi-nation stand, which was great.

Not true, Clubman40 right in front of you had cars from Germany and Hungary! But I must say that was one of the nice things about the event, all the countries of Europe and a few from even further away, all having fun together without any trouble. Each evening when the entertainment ended the beer tent was left full of inebriated Europeans singing loudly! Even if the Croatians camped near us did party on with a full disco until 2.30am on two days

Anyway here's a few of my pics - not all that many as most were Minis and they're posted on Minifinity.



Not an Elf or Hornet, but this is the car I had brought to Clubman 40 - it's my youngest daughter's pride & joy and half-restored, I've done all the hard bits now.



The EHR on Saturday




My son liked this one a lot.

I'll see if I can find any more when the rest of the family get their pics online.

Just arrived back in Northern Ireland this morning, totally exhausted after what had proved to be a fantastic weekend.

It was good to see so many cars on the Register stand and also good to be able to put faces to names seen on the forum.

I had been speaking to Andrew on the phone prior to the event and it was good to meet him in "the flesh" and he must be congratulated for putting on such a good display.

Unfortunately I was unable to park on the stand as I was with two friends who wanted to enter the Show and Shine and Concours and I was forced to park with them.

Much to my surprise I won my class on Saturday and came third on Sunday which was a great surprise as I had never taken part in such a competition before and did not consider my car to be anywhere near the show quality of the other cars on display (and still dont).

It was great to meet up with Eduard Preiswerk who was staying in the same hotel and who kept us entertained in the evenings with stories of the Riley Elf and his unexhaustable knowledge of the history of the car.

All in all a brilliant weekend and one which I will never forget.

Thanks to everyone for making Myself, Pam and Adam feel very welcome. I'm still a bit new to Elf's but we had a great time.

We didn't get back to Hull while late as on the way I stopped 10 miles from home to offer help to a broken down Mini. Turns out it was from Holland and it sounded like the clutch friction plate had disintegrated. We offered them somewhere to stay if they needed to and after cooling Guinness down a bit, she's running a bit hot after being stood since '98, we set off for home. 1 mile down the road I said to Pam 'you know she's done alright hasn't she' but I didn't touch wood in time as just as Pam agreed the fan belt snapped. We didn't have a spare, do now in both cars, and had to be recovered home. All good fun though.

Wow! I really wish I could have been there! Great showing from the EHR!

Well you did ask if you could if there was room in any of the cars if you came over! You would have been made very welcome.
I took Paul Saulnier from Boston MA. (he had his 427BHP mini van in Januarys issue of Mini World.) He was completly blown away by the number of minis there! and enjoyed meetin E/H members too.
My own club www.miniaddicts.co.uk had two Australians and one New Zealander at last weeks club meet and at the IMM.
Paul gave a little talk about his mini monster(which I had alittle dirve of last year at Mini Meet East in Maine last year.)

Apparently Mini Clubs from as far away as Arizona, Montreal and Mexico were in attendance at the IMM! Full list here

Pity the E/H logo isn't on there though

Jase

Looks like it didn't get sent in - there are instructions on the page for how to get the logo on the page, but I guess it had to be done before the event.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't catch sight of your stand, don't know how I missed it! Looked stunning from what I can see in the pics. It would have been good to meet some of the members that have made me feel at home on the forum, and to put some faces to Forum ID's!

I took down my Mini 30 auto, and was parked up with the Mini Cooper Register, who had kept us camping spaces since we had travelled all the way down from Edinburgh.

I'm just a decent brake pedal away from getting Wanda in for an MOT and am planning to take her to the vintage car rally at Selkirk, and a special event at East Fortune airfield in September. You'll need to keep putting updates of shows where the Register will be having stands, so I can hopefully join in the next one.

Cheers

Paul

Sorry to miss you too. We were between the Main Bar tent and the Auto jumble at bottom end of park!

I must be needing glasses because I'm sure we walked down there! We certainly passed a display of ERA Minis on the way over to the autojumble stalls.

The autojumble was not a great standard, we thought, especially around a lot of rip-off pricing. There was a stall selling used backplates for drum brakes for more than they are new on Minispares!

gretzky38 wrote:I must be needing glasses because I'm sure we walked down there! We certainly passed a display of ERA Minis on the way over to the autojumble stalls.

The autojumble was not a great standard, we thought, especially around a lot of rip-off pricing. There was a stall selling used backplates for drum brakes for more than they are new on Minispares!

If you passed the ERAs, you should have seen Clubman40 next to them. The EHR was the other side of Clubman40.

Agree with some of the autojumble pricing, though I was pleased with a NOS top arm for a tenner and a refurbed rear subby for £55.