TwistyBitz GP shirts

Posted on by Ian C.

Another GP shirt arrived in the mail yesterday!


This latest design is from my friend Robert Ballard, and has been a long time coming due to various issues while Robert started up his new business …
The shirt front design incorporates an aerial view of the GP, neatly representing “I” in the “MINI” design (the roof number on the front is always GP2006, representing the year that these great cars were produced) – on the back you can custom order your GP roof number.

The same design is also available on a grey “ringer” shirt (third image); this shirt is a nicer quality material, it feels softer (it’s an Authentic Pigment shirt, while the back is made by Gildan).
You can also order a long sleeve shirt, where the custom GP roof number is printed on one sleeve (see here). All these shirts can be ordered from TwistyBitz (navigate to the store then choose “apparel”).

Subs – the story so far

Posted on by Ian C.

I visited GPMINI today at Superior Systems, a custom audio shop in Peabody, to see how the creation of a speaker box was going, and to decide how it should be finished; what we have so far is a box which extends across the width of the car, positioned just in front of and below the GPs luggage bar – it’s front edge lines up with the front edge of the rear half of the car (where the rear seats would finish in a normal MINI).

The box will hold three 6″ JL Audio subwoofers, firing towards the back of the car; the DPSM 6×9 speakers, which normally fit in the MINIs rear speaker positions, will also be mounted, just behind the front seats and firing forward:

The DPSM speakers are of course driven by the DPSM amplifier; the subwoofers will be driven by an amplifier mounted in one half of the GPs rear storage area …

I originally thought about having the box painted to finish it, perhaps with some sort of design on it – but seeing the box in GPMINI made it clear that painting it wouldn’t work well, unless I did lots of additional custom paintwork both inside and perhaps also outside the car.
So the new plan will be to cover the box, perhaps in a “vinyl” material (similar to MINIs leatherette seating finish) either black or, if we can find an appropriate color material, in a finish which matches the red panels in the back of the GP.

More in a couple of weeks …

Our drive home from Philadelphia

Posted on by Ian C.

This is what we had to drive home in yesterday (430 miles total airport to airport, then a taxi home):

A “Jeep Grand Cherokee”, though there’s not much grand about it! First thing that happened when I climbed up and in to it was I hit my knee on the dash – for such a huge vehicle, there’s not much room in it … worse still when Margaret drove partway home, she had to be so close to the wheel to reach the pedals (and you can’t lower the seat) that her knees were on the dash under the wheel. I’d have hated to see the airbags go off while she was driving 😦

Driving highway the whole way, with very little traffic except near the George Washington bridge in New York, and not exceeding 80, the car managed 18mpg according to its trip display – Wow!
What bothered me most though was it’s handling … of course it’s nothing like a MINI, but driving a couple of on-ramps at nothing like MINI speeds, it still seemed to lose touch with the ground and “lurch” sideways when there was a bump in the curve. Very disconcerting.
Of course it did take all our luggage – but so would the MINI since there’s only two of us.

Happily, I am now back in GBMINI, waiting for me when we got home last night – and many thanks Pat & Dave for clearing our driveway & paths 🙂