Happy Holidays 2023

[mk1coopers]

Happy Christmas everyone

[AndyPen]

Happy Christmas everyone, and a special thanks to all of you who have helped me out this year - there have been many.

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of my car, and fingers crossed it will actually be ready by the summer.

In the meantime, here's to a productive mini year and here's how it was... and will be again

pete at ther wheel_sm.jpg

[tweedy998]

Merry Christmas one and all.

Thanks to those who've lent a hand, given advice, been friendly and generally made this forum a great place to visit.

Tweed_snow_mar23_01 copy.jpg

[Peter Laidler]

Happy Christmas and New Year to one and all. Peter Laidler, from Abingdon in rural Oxfordshire, the ancestral home of MG cars and of course, '....the Works...'

[richardACS]

Merry Christmas one and all.

Thanks to those who've lent a hand, given advice, been friendly and generally made this forum a great place to visit.

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The JH part of the number plate - was it first registered in Hertfordshire?

[morris-miner]

The very best of the seasons greetings and good luck and every best wish to everyone for a fun filled Mini adventure 2024.

[woodypup59]

Happy Christmas to all from Hertfordshire !

And yes *JH is a Herts reg.

My first motorbike, a BSA total mongrel was TJH 49.

My mum's Triumph Herald droptop was 7 RUR (also Herts). Should have kept that number , but nobody thought of that in the 70s.

[snoopy64]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all…


Just made all the merrier by hearing the Wizard himself Tony Ball on the radio!!

[mab01uk]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all…


Just made all the merrier by hearing the Wizard himself Tony Ball on the radio!!

The man in the Mini is a Rolls-Royce speaker. (independent - August 1995)
"Mr Ball, who used to be head of sales for British Leyland, is a marketing man to his bootstraps - which explains, I suppose, why he likes talking so much. He has 480 anecdotes and thousands of one-liners, which he mixes and matches - he always keeps a notebook and scribbles down anything fun he hears. Strangely, he prefers big audiences, because people in small groups are more nervous about laughing. He won't say how much he is paid, "but I could live just off my speeches". Which is appropriate, because his career was kicked off by a speech.
When he was 20, in 1955, he was named apprentice of the year at the Austin factory in Birmingham. He was asked to make a speech at the company's annual dinner and did it so well that he was immediately made a fast-track trainee manager. Three years later, he was shown a funny little new car called the Mini, and was asked to organise its launch.
He dressed up as a Wizard and "pulled" the car out of a giant top hat. Each time he waved his wand, something new emerged from the Mini: three big men, two women (including his wife), his three-month-old baby, two Afghan hounds and a huge pile of luggage. The audience went wild. He did not make it on to the board until he was 31, and then left shortly afterwards to run Barlow Rand's car dealership operations in South Africa. That was where he met Michael Edwardes, who had been appointed chairman of British Leyland and invited him back to face the riotous industrial relations music.
Although he was head of sales, his most useful skill was his oratory. He had to talk to mass meetings to try to stop strikes - because he was recognised as a guy who used to be on the shopfloor, he avoided the abuse the "real" bosses got. His most important speech, he says, was at Wembley in 1979, where he dissuaded British Leyland dealers from defecting en masse. His secret, he says, was that he could put himself in the head of the people listening - he made fun of the dealers to workers, and vice- versa; and he always made fun of himself."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi ... 97050.html

[irlmin]

Wishing everyone a happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year . G

[Old English White]

I'm late to the party this year but hope everybody here - whatever their beliefs and wherever they are in the world had a good break and enjoys the best of luck during the coming New Year!