May 2006 – M&I / GBMINI

Plants love the rain

Posted on May 29, 2006February 20, 2017 by Ian C.

While we were in Florida, there was a solid week of heavy rain up here – 15″ fell (about 2 or 3 months worth!); but the plants all loved it, especially now with wam weather following … loads of fresh new growth everywhere. Here’s a few pics, including the amazing Broom, and a lot of healthy fish:

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Bridgette likes this weather too – sunny with plants to shelter under!

MOT2006 packing day

Posted on May 28, 2006February 12, 2017 by Ian C.

Just back from vacation, I had more than 10 MINIsOnTop “yellow hat” volunteers arrive at my office yesterday to pack the 250 registrations ready for mailing … Every package has a pile of tourist information (including discount coupons at the North Conway outlet shops), loads of route instructions and MINIsOnTop event info, a freebie antenna ball, auto road and food passes (if purchased), Tshirts/Hats/Grille badges/Clings (again, if purchased), door prize tickets … the helpers set up a “production assembly line” and incredibly completed the job in only a couple of hours!

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Also seen for the first time yesterday was model MINIs customized with the MOT logo (these will be available to kids at the event), and the custom painted pink model MINI signed by Penn & Teller (they own a pink MINI so this one is a trbute to that, and signed by them – the model was donated by Michael, and disassembled, painted and rebuilt by Julian at Sublime Restorations – one of his donations to MINIsOnTop!)

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Penn & Teller signed MINI model

The pink MINI will be a door prize at MINIsOnTop, available to some lucky winner!

After all the MINIsOnTop packing efforts, I arranged a surprise visit to a friends classic car body shop (Scuderia Donati), where some rare classic cars were in various stages of repair (my previous visits have been written up as Supercars and Ferrari):

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The GP booklet

Posted on May 27, 2006February 17, 2017 by Ian C.

I visited MINI of Peabody today and was given a couple of copies of the US MINI Cooper S with John Cooper Works HP kit booklets, which I have scanned and put in a gallery:

The booklet describes the exterior (remodelled front and rear aprons, side skirts, new rear wing spoiler, 218 horsepower, 18″ light alloy wheels, thunder blue metallic paint with pure silver contrast roof), the interior (anthracite speedometer and rev counter dials with red needle), seating (Grey / Panther black cloth / leather with red stitching, adjustable thigh support, built-in heating, and no rear seats), equipment list (aero kit, a/c, DSC, JCW kit with 16″ breaks [sic], LSD, sports suspension, 18″ light allow rims, on-board computer, CD player radio with MFSW, anthracite interior) and technical data (weight 2649lb, max power 215hp+/-, max torque 180ft lbs @ 4500rpm, max speed >146, fuel consumption 24.7/38.0)

It’s interesting to compare this with the one from England – they are mostly identical but the English version has a few differences, including different units for the technical specs (218 hp UK compared with 215 SAE hp, 245 Nm torque UK compared with 180 ft lbs, etc).
Most significantly, the English car gets Recaro sports seats, not available in USA due to tighter airbag laws.