There are all kinds of events and drives for you and your MINI. These range from friends getting together for a drive to your favorite restaurant across town, to corporate-sponsored trips from coast to coast.
Club drives and events
Most MINI clubs have organized drives and put on events. Our primary club, the Houston MINI Motoring Society quite often has drives after their monthly meetings as well as specially organized drives throughout the year. They also do quite a few events such as participating in car shows, parades, Christmas dinner, and much more.
Larger clubs can put on even larger events or can be part sponsors of larger events such as MINIs in the Ozarks or MITO which has a lot of sponsors.
Independent drives and events
If you look around you may find special organizations such as MINI Fun Drives which hosts drives to various places throughout the year. One of our favorite drives from this group is the drive out through the Three Twisted Sisters in the Texas hill country. This drive always brings people from the Houston, Austin, and San Antonio clubs as well as unaffiliated drivers. We also occasionally get visitors from clubs in Dallas and Corpus Christi.
Runs like these can be a couple of hours long, or as in the case of our Sisters run, last most of the day including a group lunch.
Corporate-sponsored events
MINI is fortunate to have a large support base that extends right up to the top of the MINI USA offices. Every two years they sponsor a fantastic road trip they call MINI Takes The States or MTTS for short. These typically start on one coast and end on the opposite coast. Running for almost two weeks you have a lot of fun and meet great new friends.
We have run one partial (2016) and one complete (2018) MTTS in Buster and are gearing up as I write this to do the whole 2020 MTTS in Lola.
These events are huge productions where they have group meetings of 2000 or more drivers every morning of the trip where they feed you, pass out freebies, go over the planned route, and generally have a great time. Along the route, they often plan on events such as tours of interesting places, stops at historical places, and group photos.
Once the trip is complete it is time to party! The night of the 2018 MTTS they had taken over an entire ski village in Keystone Colorado and brought in live bands, tons of vendors, free food and drinks (including one alcoholic drink for those of age), put on a silent disco with three live DJs and a ton more fun.
These events are not just about having fun, they also serve a purpose. The last two have supported Defy Hunger, a great organization dedicated to feeding the hungry. We helped to raise millions of dollars for their cause and that just feels great.
