Huge charity car meet -Spring 2007 - would you attend??

[v15ben]

The idea:
The plan is to find a large venue, centrally located within England. We will then invite as many car enthusiasts as possible to attend and park up at the venue. Any type of car from a Skoda to a Veyron, no matter what you drive, if you are an enthusiast then this is for you! It would be great to have a huge number of MINIs in attendance

You can then spend the day chatting to other enthusiasts, admiring the cars on show and generally basking in automotive joy for the day.

We will also have some donation buckets around the venue all day to try and raise as much money as we can for charity. The charity chosen is a school recently set up in Tanzania. The school is always looking for funding to provide facilities, equipment and enjoyable activities for students.

The formula then is pretty simple and it will be pretty easy to have a great day.

Would you attend this event?
The plan is to hold the event in spring 2007 (possibly May/June) at a suitable venue. This gives plenty of time to organise a great day, promote the event and generally get sorted. A similar event at Virginia Waters this February attracted 200+ cars and others were turned away at the entrance because the venue was full. We hope to find a bigger venue and have many more than 200 cars!

All I want to know today, is would you be interested in attending an event like this? No commitment, just an expression of interest.

Please vote below and thanks for taking the time to read this post.

MODS: Can we make this a sticky?? Thanks

[Paul]

I wouldn't, mainly because it risks clashing with the MINI2 Charity Ball on May 12th next year which myself and others will be spending money at, and taking a lot of tmie organising beforehand.

The MINI2 Charity Ball is THE MINI2 Charity event.

On the other hand, while I appreciate the effort to raise money for charity, what would be the draw of this event, what makes it unique, and what will people get in return for their money?

If you had some attractions on offer, maybe some "I was there" stickers (or something) to give in return for donations etc. it could be more of an attraction?

I'd consider attending an event that looked exciting or unusual AND raised money for charity. But it sounds like you're asking people to go to a big carpark in May (risk of heavy showers for an outdoor event, worth considering maybe?) and paying money to charity for their efforts.

That said, it's probably worth adding that I'm also not a big fan of static shows at the best of times, so probably not the audience you're aiming at anyway.

[v15ben]

Fair points well made there Paul.

The initial plan was to create a massive number of draws for this event including a display of supercars, passenger rides in top end exotics, trade stands, raffles, stickers and a massive day out for all. The problem with all this as you will probably have found with the MINI2 Charity Ball is in the organising. The issues we had with health and safety legislation, finding a suitable venue prepared to help us out, child protection issues for having private individuals rather than employed drivers in the rides section, not to mention group insurance for the rides... all of this puts a bit of a downer on this for me.

I admit that British weather is not the most reliable, but a similar event in February this year had plenty of sunshine and 200-250 cars plus plenty more friends/relatives and members of the public popping in. That event was Virginia Waters in Surrey and I am sure some MINI2 members were there

I simply see this as an opportunity to build on an exisiting idea which was a great success last time out, but to also raise some money for good causes in the process.

As for clashing with the MINI2 ball, I will make sure this is not the case. It would be nice to see a few MINIs coming along.

Remember of course there will be plenty of Ferraris, Lambos, Porsches, TVRs, Lotuses, Nobles and rarer exotic toys in attendance. The last event saw an F40, Diablo, Ariel Atom, Dodge Charger and plenty more amidst the attendees. I guess that this in itself is the attraction of this event - if you like seeing exotic cars and chatting to enthusiastic owners then you'll have a good fun day.

Thanks for listening.

[Paul]

Believe it or not, you're more likely to get rain in May than February. June would be better (in terms of rain, and likely heat).

[v15ben]

Indeed so. There is a possible problem in June though... two little words:

Le Mans

I think a meet very early in June might get more interest and will hopefully bring out some of those crazy cars that normally only see the light of day for La Sarthe

[SoggyCornFlakes]

just not May

[minicabrio]

As long as it doesn't clash with the ball thats fine...

I'll gladly turn up... and if anyone want a ride in a MINI, then I'm up for that too !

[v15ben]

Thanks for the replies folks.

I have had a couple of people say that they can provide a suitable venue so I am following those leads as we speak.

I would love to have rides in MINIs and other cars on the day, but it will be difficult to organise that 'officially' as part of the event. If you want to take people for a spin and they would give you a couple of quid as a donation on the day, then that would be cool. However it would have to be on your own insurance and your own liability 100%. The main reason we cannot have rides is that we cannot get group liability insurance for them meaning that if anything goes wrong, we will be in deep problems.

Thanks for the interest though folks and it would be great to see more MINIs coming along.