Purchases

What I think is a pretty rare CD; I couldn’t find reference to it online anywhere; it arrived sealed, with no info on the cover about what it contains! So I had to open it, revealing five tracks:

The tracks are all somewhat electro-funk-jazz:
Don’t Hesitate by Hill & Funes
Stars by Turntablerocker
Step into the gallery (MINI version) by Micatone
Espuma (Aha, Aha) (progressive short mix) by Espuma
Return of the prodigal son by George Benson

Espuma is one of my favourite tracks to play loud while driving twisties in the MINI 🙂

I’ve no idea what this CD was for; perhaps background music in European dealerships (the couple of music CDs I have from US dealerships are very different content!) … I wonder if there was ever a “MINI tracks 2”?

It’s finally time to clear the backlog of MINI collectibles that I’ve been meaning to document … so if you’re not interested in collectibles, you might want to look away for a week or so!

Today, a nice MINI production leafleft “The MINI production triangle in the UK”; there’s lots of production triangle stuff around (including this pin), but this leaflet puts everything together quite nicely!
Inside shows a UK “map” indicating the relative positions of the three production plants Hams Hall (engines), Swindon (pressings) and Oxford (assembly), along with descriptions of each plant:

There’s some extra info too, including surprising facts like 429+135=564 robots, ostrich feathers, 2,400 components, and 16 gasoline engine variants!

 

A couple months ago, I read about a special 50th anniversary Mini coin made available free by UK’s Royal Mint; it had to be shipped to an English address, but that’s no problem for me (thanks, Dad!) … my Dad sent on the coin and it arrived recently, a nice addition to my ever growing MINI collection:

While visiting the Royal Mint website, I found (surprise!) that they also offered a £5 coin, in a nice presentation, at not too expensive a mark-up, so I ordered one of them as well (this can be shipped straight to USA, happily, so I’ve had it a while):