Review

Click here to add your MG News.

MG 2000 - The 9th Annual North American MGB Register's International Convention

The party started on Thursday morning with an "Early Bird" Car Show this was a come as you are event meaning no car wash or hair brush, points were given on the cars with the most road dirt on them. And drivers with the most wind blown hair. This was followed by an Industro-Urban Rallye/Tour of Clevelands intercity neighbourhoods, steel mills and factory districts. This event finished up at the Nautica Entertainment Complex in the Flats where the evening blowout was just begining.

Thursday night was The Flats. Not sure what they are? Well, New York has Times Square, Vegas has the Strip and Cleveland has the Flats, need I say more. The area offers a wide variety of restaurants, pubs and entertainment running along both of the Cuyahoga River. For those that really wanted the cut loose the convention ran a shuttle bus from the host hotel so that drinking and driving was not an issue. Some of the participants choose just to hang out at the host hotel parking lot and have party there.

Friday morning saw Cuyahoga Valley Tour & Funkana this was followed by the Goodtime III River & Harbour Cruise on Lake Erie. Along with this the host club ran shuttle buses all day long from the Holiday Inn parking lot to downtown shopping areas and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Showeres put a bit of a damper on the evening's planned parking lot party. The event was moved inside the hotel's ballroom and free beer and chicken wings were provided by Triple "C" Motoring Accessories. The rain eased up and the gathering moved outside, but the party remained subdued since everything was now quite wet.

Saturday turned out to be fairly nice with a partly cloudy sky and only a small chance of rain. The car show was held at the downtown Burke Lake Front Airport. Over 400 cars took part in what may be the biggest NAMGBR Convention car show to date. As expected the MGB Roadster made up the largest portion of this packed field, followed by The MGB-GT and the MG Midget. In addition to the MGBs & Midgets on hand, a sizeable number of MGA's and T-Series cars were present. There were only two 1100's, a few Magnettes and a handfull of "other British" at the show.

Saturday evening featured the awards banquet, however in order to limit the amount of time spent on this only a small number of awards were handed out during the banquet. Rick Ingram presented the Concours awards and NAMGBR Chairman, Ron Tugwell presented the John Thornley award of excellence. Ron also took some time to thank the Cleveland Club for all of thier hard work and the Register members for coming.

The event then moved out the parking lot where a DJ was setup for a second try at the parking lot party. The valve cover races that were scheduled for the previous night were run.

And now for something completely different, how about MG Olympics, that right would you believe shot putting an alternator or other test of strength involving an MG part, the good fokes in Cleveland dreamed up a few and divided some of the local club members into groups the comptete against each other. The LANCO(Lancaster County Pa.) MG Club won first and The MGs of Baltimore, Ltd. Car club came in second.

Once the above sillyness was over the awards for the car shown were handed out, the music was turned up and Cleveland was rocking. The parking lot party went on into the wee hours.

Sunday was morning was a wet one, it was raining cats and dogs or would that be MG and Triumphs? Well, the participants packed up their cars and headed for home thinking about next years' "ALL REGISTER" event MG 2001 scheduled for July 2th to the 6th at St. Paul, Minnesota. I hope to see you there.

Richard G. Liddick <RGL2MGBGT@AOL.COM>

Back to the News content

Made in England