8th Mini Europe Rally

Oops, we did it again...!

Again we travelled several kilometres to make the Mini Europe Rally 2001. Earlier this year we visited the Musée national de l'Automobile in Mulhouse, France. Here we will finish in the 2001 issue of the MER.

In this museum over 400 exceptional automobiles, including over 100 Bugattis are shown. The museum puts on display the oldest-, the most handsome and the most expensive car (The famous Bugatti Royale). What to say of the fastest car the Porsche 936.

We will have lunch in the "Pit stop" of the museum, and we were guaranteed to have a fantastic afternoon spent in the midst of one of the greatest legends of the twentieth century - that of the motor car.

But before we visit this Museum we have to drive hundreds of kilometres during several sections to reach Mulhouse.

Therefore we will start at the Nürburgring where we will have our official welcome on Tuesday 27 March. We have an option of using the old Paddock to do the technical test of the minis. It is very important that your mini doesn't make to much noise, so be sure that you take all precautions you can.Further details of the technical test you will find in the MER Regulations which will be send to all participants some weeks before the start.

After the technical test we will have lunch at the Dorint Hotel of the Ring. This is the same hotel where we will have our overnight stay. It is a beautiful hotel with nice rooms, swimming pool, sauna and a very good kitchen.

After lunch the first section will be held in the area of Adenau. A prologue to get used to the roadbook and to make the first classification.
We are still negotiating to do slalom on the racetrack.

In the evening we can catch up with old and new Mini friends in the bar of the Dorint hotel.

The next morning we will have an early start towards south. We will travel through the of Mosel area, as we did before and again we found new roads in this amazing scenery of winefields. On Mont Royal we will have lunch and from there our journey will lead us along the banks of the Mosel towards Überherrn. Where a amazing hotel is situated called Linslerhof. Linslerhof was the farm of the German family von Boch. They made the Linslerhof to an attractive and unique Hotel in which you still can smell the old atmosphere. After a good meal and a good nights rest we are  heading south again.
Beautiful sections will lead us to our lunch. We wanted to have lunch in Sitifort at the "au bon coin". But when we arrived at the restaurant, it had burnt down. We still try to figure it out wheather it was our visit last year or just coincidence, however we found a new auberge called "de la Foret".

 The following sections will lead us to Bolwiller, the Elsass Club Hotel, our host from last year. We had so many good memories of this hotel, that we decided to visit them again.

We also had some unfinished "business" in the Elsass. For instance the cancelled sections of the MER 2000. The next 3 nights we will stay at this hotel, so that all participants will find their hotel room in time for the final day. We will have perfect sections through the "Black Forest" of Germany, a good lunch in Zell im Wiesental. We all will drive to the final day, and give all participants lots of time on sections to be able to reach the highest qualifications possible.

We did our utmost to make an unforgettable rally again and hope that you will enjoy it as we do making it. The drive of organising a rally like this is simply based on having pleasure in it and looking forward to seeing soul mates.