I attended the 60th Mini Anniversary at the Cowley Classic Car Show today i.e. August 26th 2019 which included a 60 car Convoy from the MINI plant at Cowley to Cutteslowe Park North Oxford, this was meant to celebrate what was one of the first road trips of the first minis (Morris Mini Minor) from the Cowley works to the A40 and back.
August 26th 1959 was when the mini's were put on sale to the public and 60 years ago to the day of the car show in Oxford.
There was a Mini from nearly every of the 60 years including 2 1959 cars, there was a second convoy of 19 cars held after the main one made up from reserve cars attending, between the 2 totalling 79 cars.
Les Darcy with his Austin Seven and Justin Redknap with the Morris Film car which appeared in the BMC Wizardy on Classic Wheels.
With the help of the council the traffic lights were switched against other traffic to help with the 60 car convoy from Horspath Road To Headington roundabout on the A40, with the 59's and a 1960 Austin seven at the head of the convoy.
The convoy was filmed from over road bridges and a BBC Radio Oxford Drone.
A good but very hot and sunny day was had by all.
It was well worth the effort put in by BBC Radio Oxford who promoted the event, Tanya and Jason Field for getting the cars together and their band of helpers to get everything in place at Plant Oxford, where the cars had been started from on their mass trip to the classic car show .
Jerry Pennell.
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I had been in discussion with the organisers of IMM for several months regarding a display of 1959 Models, and in the end we had an area allocated to the register combined with the British Mini Club.
We had been made aware at the Metro and Mini Day at the British Motor Museum the week before that some members of the register would be in attendance at the IMM.
After registering on the Wednesday prior to the show, I arrived on Friday morning and had a chat with Dave Hollis from the British Mini Club to see where we would be displaying our cars.
On the Friday we had a couple of cars on display, my September car and Bernie Woodruffs November car.
Saturday we had mine and Bernie's car and were joined by Michael Elsberg with his two early cars, numbers 139 and 269.
The weather was less than kind with wind and rain showers, at one point we had to evacuate the area whilst a large marquee had to be taken down as the force 8 gale was threatening to blow it away.
On the Sunday our day visitors joined us, at that point we had 6 cars on display.
Bill Fairney with his November car.
John and Liz Stratton with their November car.
My September car.
Bernie Woodruff November car.
Gary Pearson with his December car.
Mekke Peterson with his car.
Mekke had driven over from Sweden in his 1959 Mini, which we believe to be the furthest distance a car had been driven to the event.
Even though the weather was not kind to us, we had a lot of interest in the cars and on the whole a worth while event to attend.
Jerry Pennell.
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We had a very good day at MITP at Mallory Park today, the sun shone and it was a cool day but it did not rain plenty of action on the track.
Malcolm and myself spoke with plenty of people.
I had a very good time and got home safe and sound about 19:00
Jerry Pennell.
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We had 47 1959 Minis on our stand at the show celebrating 60 years of the Mini. This was the largest gathering of these very early cars ever seen since they were built.
There was a tremendous interest shown in them throughout the day. We had cars from Denmark and Sweden as well as cars from all over the UK. We also had some of the ex BMC guys join us to chat with people.
Included in the line up of cars there was the 2nd oldest surviving Morris Mini brought over from Denmark and 3 ex press cars 544GWL used in BMC promotional films, 981 GFC ex John Bolster and 667 GFC, the car that did the Autocar test run around the Mediterranean in 1959.
667 GFC was shipped here from Japan earlier in the year for restoration which was duly completed just in time for this event. The owner flew in from Japan and was joined by Peter Riviere, the original test driver to be reunited with the car.
A cup was awarded for the furthest travelled to Micke Petterson who drove all the way from Uppsala in Sweden and a cup awarded to Stuart Keeping for the “favourite” Mini on the stand by a vote taken from all the 1959 exhibitors.
A big thank you to Tom Caren from the British Motor Museum who helped us put on such a large display. It was a fantastic event with a huge variety of Minis of all types and luckily the weather was kind to us too.
Of course too, a real big thank you to everyone who made the effort to bring their 1959 Minis along, without all of you this would not have been possible.
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We had seven 1959 Minis at Himley this year.
Lars Søe-Jensen brought chassis 131 from Denmark.
He had only just finished restoring this very early car.
It is the oldest known survivor from the Cowley production line. After Himley he took it to the BMW MINI plant in Oxford where it is on loan to them for display at the factory.
Ian Matthews, Ian Sims, Paul Kimpton, Tony Billingham, Stuart Keeping, Trevor Ripley and Bill Bell also had their cars on show at the 1959 Mini Register stand.
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A good start to the 60th year of the Mini.
The British Mini Club "Mini Fair 2019" was the first of many shows the 1959 Mini Register will be attending this year.
It was a very busy show with a great deal of interest in the early cars too. There was a constant flow of interested people all day.
Had it not been for the 1959 prototype Mini Moke on the stand, the righthand drive cars would have been outnumbered by lefthand drive models.
We had some very special early Minis on the stand, tenth oldest a Portugese car, eleventh oldest, a Danish car, a pre launch UK car (said to be the first Mini on the Isle of Wight). We had two more they were post launch date, another Portugese car and another UK car.
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