2018 was a bumper year for the Midas Owners Club. Events kicked off in March with our first visit to the Practical Classics Restoration Show at the NEC. Whilst this is a smaller show than November’s Classic Motor Show, it proved to be a lively and popular event – we are already booked in and preparing to attend again in 2019. Our stand was located close to the live stage, which meant we were located in a busy spot. Among the visitors to the Midas Owners Club stand were several celebrities including Alex Reilly (The One Show, The Classic Car Show and the original Top Gear), Jon Bentley (The Gadget Show, Fifth Gear and the original Top Gear), Mike Brewer and Ant Anstead (Wheeler Dealers), Tim Shaw (Car SOS) and no less than three Fuzz Townsends…
The most striking thing about the show was that it attracted more attention online than any other event that the club has attended. Partly this was thanks to Mike Brewer posting his ‘I’ve got the #Midas touch’ photo on his Twitter account – https://twitter.com/mikebrewer/status/977231086563549185 – but also thanks to the many Midas enthusiasts who posted up their own photos of our stand and helped to spread the word.
After we had recovered from our efforts in March it was off to Stoneleigh at the start of May for the National Kit Car Show. Once again there was a large club turnout with some 17 cars present on Sunday for the concours and AGM.
The standard of cars turning up for the concours has improved over the years, despite many of these cars being in regular use. This year Brian and Julie Badcock took the top prize with their immaculate Mk2, scoring well in all three areas of presentation judged: external, internal and under-bonnet
The brilliant sunshine of Stoneleigh was only matched by our visit to Gaydon at the end of May for the National Metro and Mini Show. We have always received a warm welcome at Gaydon and enjoyed the opportunity to look around the museum collections and this year we had the added bonus of being invited into the arena to show off our cars.
With a Mk2 Bronze (Brian Badcock), a Mk3 Gold (Richard Streets), a Mk4 Cortez (Tony Moss) and a Mk4 Excelsior (Alistair Courtney) lined up the marque was well represented.
June saw us back down in Somerset at the Royal Bath and West Showground, Shepton Mallet, for the Bristol Classic Car Show. The weather was good, but fortunately not as hot as 2017 (when ice creams had to be devoured immediately, before they melted). The club had decided not to attend the November show in Shepton Mallet, due to its proximity to the NEC show, instead we concentrated our efforts on the summer event and managed a line up of five cars.
This is always a friendly and popular show and we plan to return in 2019.
July is a quiet month for large shows, so the club gathers at the Alternative Cars open day. This year the attendance of Midas Cars was slightly down with at least three regular visitors attending in non Midas cars due to various issues.
This did not dampen the enthusiasm and camaraderie. Once again we all tucked in to a barbecue and enjoyed the opportunity to discuss all things Midas.
This year the Stanford Mini Fair was cancelled due to bad weather (yes there was one day of bad weather in 2018) so our next event was at Castle Combe for the Mini Action Day. This year we had a spot in the extended paddock, but again we were down on cars due to various issues. With just 4 Midas cars present we were outnumbered by our friends in the Mini-Marcos club for the first time in many years. The member to cars ratio was 2:1 so the opportunity to double our presence in 2019 exists.
We finished off 2018 with a return to the NEC for the Classic Motor Show and with the event falling more, or less, 40 years after the Midas marque was launched the club pulled out all the stops to make sure that our stand was well presented. Not only had we tracked down and borrowed the very first Midas, the original prototype that debuted at the Performance Car Show at the end of 1978, but we had also arranged to borrow Gordon Murray’s Midas-Alfa, possibly the best known (if elusive) Midas of all.
Flanked by Neil Franklin’s Excelsior and Richard Street’s Gold Convertible these two notable cars provided much interest throughout the show. That brought 2018 to an end, but with several notable Midas anniversaries to celebrate next year, 2019 looks to be even busier.