By Grant Bowyer

​This year's world famous (in East Auckland) Christmas Lights run was organised by Club Captain Stephen, and was set to be a fantastic night to see the lights- dark skies from all the clouds, glistening roads from the rain, and a lovely backdrop of frequent lightning. Undeterred, we pressed on anyway.

We gathered at Mcdonalds Greenlane, causing a fair amount of disruption in the carpark even before we all turned on our Christmas lights. All the cars were fantastically decorated, it seemed everyone had put in a lot of effort. 
 
We made it to the first two stops without incident (Sayes Close in East Tamaki and Fern Place in Beachlands), where the Minis were welcomed by delighted children of all ages. Fern Close was particularly dramatic, with frequent flashes of lightning all around. 

As we left Fern Close the heavens opened, and we headed directly to Darren's house in Uldale Place to assess the damage. We decided to abandon the rest of the run as Darren's house had turned into an almighty water feature, all the Minis were leaking, and the Muries' Moke was doing a fair impression of a bathtub on wheels.

Thanks again to Stephen for arranging a most memorable run!

By Tony Maulder.

A very sunny day (Sunday), at the December 2018 Caffeine and "CLASSICS" at Smales Farm.

More than 30 classic Minis turned up and put on a great display, more than 500 other classics turned up also. I organised the cars into four decades, '60s, '70s, '80s, & '90s. Warwick and Lesley raced in with the De Joux. Alister, Steve and my early Coopers were there. 

The '90s Coopers were Phil's chrome show car, Zak, Jo and a Cooper 35 carrying on the green theme, with our club captain in red. A  white Murayama '90s Rover Cooper (John Cooper tuning kit added in Japan) was brought along by Jason. This car was one I brought along to C&C just over a year ago. The Snells came along a little later. "UK1958," a '90s white Cooper, was also parked nearby.
There were a myriad of '80s Minis there, nearly all modified, including Jim's 8 port Clubman and Darren's CuteBM.
The rest of our group was mostly '70s Minis. Amongst these were 3 vans/estates, a couple of utes: a V8 one and a standard one for comparison. And the Muries' jeeped Moke.

Parked nearby was a surf's up Mini, ready for the beach on this lovely Sunday. 
We took up 3 complete parking rows this time. I will try for 4 rows in January, one for each decade. Help me guys , more cars please.

NOTE, IF THE ENTRY BARRIER IS DOWN PLEASE COME AROUND IT, WE ALWAYS HAVE A SAVED SPOT FOR CLASSIC MINIS (or come around to the back park down by the steps/hedge behind our main spot.)