MINI United 2009 - 50th Anniversary Official Celebration!

Owen

As the title says, there's going to be a huge MINI festival this May 22nd - 24th in Silverstone for the 50th anniversary of the Mini. There'll be classic Mini racing, new MINI racing from the MINI Challenge race series, Helicopter rides, Stunt Drivign School (In your own MINI), Track time in your own MINI, quad biking, the Russ Swift display, go kart tracks for the Kids, plenty of stalls, stand, restaurants, bars, and loads of activities over the course of the weekend.

As well as being a car festival, it's going to be a Music festival too with top International bands and DJs, so if you know anyone who owns a new model MINI, or classic Mini, get the word out. The MINI Club of Ireland (http://miniclub.ie) are going en masse, which means ferry and hotel discounts if anyone wants to team up.

The website is http://www.miniunited.com, and has a facebook like interface where you can find other MINI owners from your area to team up with, and ones from further afield to get completely and utterly locked with. This is the third MINI United, with an average of 6000 owners meeting the previous two times, so it's going to be huge!

Last but by no means least, there'll be the launch of 2 50th anniversary editions of the MINI at the event, carrying on the tradition of the Mini 30, 35 and the Mini 40 models.

Some photos from previous MINI Uniteds :

Owen

Sorry about the image sizes ... I resized them in the box, but they still came out large.

peasant

What? The BIMI is 50 years old already? :eek:

Call me a purist, call me old fashioned ...but the Mini 40 was the last anniversary edition there will ever be

Owen

peasant wrote: »

Call me a purist, call me old fashioned ...but the Mini 40 was the last anniversary edition there will ever be

Well, you can't be a purist, as the Mini 40 was made when BMW owned Rover People seem to conveniently forget that without BMW, there wouldn't have been any classic Minis made in the late 90's at all - the brand was all but dead when they bought it.

Anyway, that's guaranteed to kill this thread, it's going to descend now into a spiral of new MINI vs old Mini debate leaving the event an orphaned thread

Halfrauds

ned78 wrote: »

Well, you can't be a purist, as the Mini 40 was made when BMW owned Rover People seem to conveniently forget that without BMW, there wouldn't have been any classic Minis made in the late 90's at all - the brand was all but dead when they bought it.

Anyway, that's guaranteed to kill this thread, it's going to descend now into a spiral of new MINI vs old Mini debate leaving the event an orphaned thread

Yes and the mini brand was dead, when BL was formed, when the clubman was introduced, when the metro was introduced, in fact the mini was "dead" since 69 if you count the first "death", The Germans just bought rover for the name they did nothing to keep the late Mpis going apart from:

Make the build quality even worse, use poorer grades of steel, make more rust traps, make the cooper slower, make the engines even less reliable, the list goes on.

Im all for the new minis, i think its a fantastic car especialy the cooperS but i dont think it should have anything to do with mini 50. mini 50 is for pure alex issigonis cars only, a series engines, and built in cowley and longbridge.

Wasnt the new design released under the rover banner at the british motor show and not the BMW one?