The Midlands Breakfast Club has in the past been a very popular event with us but it has been missing from the car event calendar for some time due to other commitments that the organiser had. At last though it has returned and we looked forward to a freezing cold morning on a windy RAF Cosford base.

The weather didn’t disappoint – dry but bitterly cold. The café did disappoint – now a Costa shop and frankly they just cannot cope with the large numbers of people first thing on a Sunday morning. Yep there is no other way of saying it they are rubbish. The cars, the planes, the people though – all good.

We went along with the guys from the Midlands based Yam MINI club and for me they brought along the best cars of the show. Namely a Father and Son team with an original and a new GP! Ok so there were some very exotic models on show, Ferraris, Astons,  Japanese muscle cars and so on but the bottom line is that we like MINIs. Yesterday we were at the MINI showrooms looking at the new Paceman and today we cast our eyes over the new GP. When I first saw this at MINI United back in 2012 I was frankly underwhelmed by the GP  and when I saw it again at the Paris Motor Show it still did not float my boat. It was parked next to a MINI Coupé JCW at the Paris Show and it was the Coupé that was getting all the attention not the GP. Today however, we were at a show attended by car enthusiasts who mostly had brought some tasty metal of their own and they are a more knowledgeable and discerning audience than Joe Public at the Paris Motor Show.  Our JCW Coupé was parked next to the new GP but this time our car never got a look in against the GP!

 This time I checked out the inside of the GP and some of its finer points in detail, such as the sexy rear diffuser and my take on it was far more favourable than in the past. I also chatted to Dad, who owned the original GP before passing it on to his son. I appreciated his frank assessment of the two GPs, which I believe is what I would feel.  Basically, the new one is technically better than the old in just about every department and yet… and yet it is not necessarily more fun to drive. The original GP (which I have driven) is a hoot to drive, the new one is fun too  but it has grown up so of course it’s better but the jury is out on which is the more fun.

Yesterday, I mentioned we looked at a Paceman and we loved it, we should have one in our life and we came away yesterday driving it into our fantasy garage but today, that old GP popped up looking shiny and with the cheekiest bonnet I have ever set eyes on and both of us wanted to drive one!

Anyway back to the day. It was great fun seeing all the cars and it gave us a chance to play with our new X-E1 Fuji camera. We are delighted with the results from the camera, though we did limit our options by accidentally shooting everything on spot metering mode which gave us some very contrasty photos to say the least.  Click on any of the photos to see a slideshow of photos from the day.