MINI2

Magical Mystery Mini Tour 2008 San Francisco
http://www.magicalmysteryminitour.com

The Magical Mystery Mini Tour is a Mini celebration with the theme of the 1960’s-1970’s “hippie”, “summer of love” era of San Francisco. During that era there was “free love” & “free spirits”, psychedelic printing, sandals, flowers in your hair, peace symbols, and a large amount of music especially from England. The Beatles were one of those bands with a big influence on San Francisco music culture. As this is a Mini event, we added Mini to the name of one of the Beatles songs, “The Magical Mystery Tour” and thus the name.

The Magical Mystery Mini Tour is being held on Treasure Island, smack in the middle of the San Francisco bay with 360-degree views of the San Francisco skyline, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, Angel Island, and the east bay. This is one of the most premier pieces of real estate on the planet, with million dollar views. We have rented the Great Lawn and adjacent parking lot. The lawn is approximately 126,000 square feet. We will be providing a main event tent (130′ X 100′ = 13,000 sq ft.), fully lighted, with tables, chairs for eating and just gathering. We will have some ‘infamous” racing Minis on display. The main event tent will have propane heaters, it will be equipped with clear panel walls so as not to take away from the spectacular views, we are providing 24 hour security, we are bringing in Port-A-Lets, washing stations, garbage cans, dumpsters, diesel generators, tenting for the caterer for the BBQ dinner, stage, lighting, and sound system for the band, live music, vendor tenting with tables, chairs, electricity.

We have set up group packages with the San Francisco Giants for Friday night’s game at AT&T Park. On Saturday we will have a Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, Mt. Tam, Stinson Beach Run and we have set up special winery tours in the Sonoma & Napa Valleys. On Saturday night we will hold a catered BBQ dinner and live concert on the Great Lawn. On Sunday morning we will have a sunrise bonfire breakfast on Ocean Beach and the Steve McQueen memorial run through the streets of San Francisco, followed by a Santa Cruz mountain run Sunday afternoon.

We will have games and event for the kids.

All of this information will be available in the program with route maps, things to do, local facts, etc., that will be provided at registration. .

Many people will be coming from all over the country. We also people coming from Italy, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada.

This event has been organized, planned, funded, and worked, by members of our non-profit MINI club. There have already been hundreds of hours of volunteer time and effort invested into this event. Any extra proceeds that go beyond the covering costs will go to charities.

We are doing this to have, what we hope, is a wonderful, spectacular, and memorable event in San Francisco for the Mini community. Hope to see you in September.

BMW group have just released their latest sales stats, and they look good both for BMW (in particular the 1 and 5 series), but also of note are that sales of the MINI also continued to be very positive.

In the month just past, 21,463 MINIs were delivered to customers, 17.5% more than in April 2007 (18,264). For the year to April, 79,680 MINI were sold, which represents an increase of 22.1% (prev.yr.: 65,244).

Not bad going considering the economic slow down we keep hearing about, however the MINI brand may be gaining sales as people cut back from more expensive, and more thirsty brands to the smaller end of the market.

For the fourth year running BMW has won overall top prize at the 2008 International Engine of the Year Awards.

A panel of judges from around the globe awarded the top honour to the 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged petrol engine which powers the 1 Series, 3 Series and X6 in the 135i, 335i and X6 xDrive35i models respectively.

The 1.6 litre BMW/PSA unit found in the MINI scooped the top prize in the 1.4 to 1.8 litre engine capacity. Between them, BMW and MINI drove off with five category wins to dominate the 2008 awards.

Final results for overall IEotY 2008:

Engine - Points

BMW 3.0-litre twin-turbo (Various / 306hp) - 380
Volkswagen Group 1.4-litre TSI (Various / Various) - 287
Volkswagen Group 2.0-litre FSI (Various / 207hp) - 270
BMW 4.0-litre V8 (M3 / 420hp) - 241
BMW PSA 1.6-litre turbo (Various / 173hp) - 151
BMW 5.0-litre V10 (M5, M6 / 507hp) - 149