This year the MESS was allocated a stand in a separate hall from our cousins, the RSSOC and the ROC. George and I had been very busy trying to bring to fruition our Special Event in the hope of giving the many visitors to our stand the good news first hand. We were not able to get our written event confirmation and only started to organise the NEC event with a few weeks to go. We quickly got four cars promised, however, one had to pull out forcing me to stand in with my Gold MB that required several hours of cleaning to make her worthy of a place on the stand.

I do think the four car stand with our central area worked very well, so much so that by Saturday 4pm people had taken all 180 of our marque brochures, leaving us none for the Sunday! We were kept constantly busy on the stand (see pictures) and missed much of what the event had to offer. Next year we have decided to each have a day away from the stand to allow us to enjoy the show. It was great to meet up with many RSSOC people that came to the MB stand for a good chat and much good hearted banter. We also got a warm welcome at the RSSOC stand and also relieved them of some lovely cake ;o)... The RSSOC stand was spacious, well set out and had some wicked cars on display. Their stand was close to the ROC stand which was also spacious with a great variety of cars on display. Our stand was a very tight squeeze with only a few inches separating us from the Taxi stand behind us. The flip side to this was that we were located close to the Auto-Jumble and directly facing the central walkway which gave us a constant flow of visitors throughout the weekend.

There was much interest in the Middlebridge marque with the British Classic Press visiting us, and once again the French Press wanting pictures and a story. We have also been invited to attend a Classic Car event on the Isle of White with Ferry fees paid for! Sadly, this clashes with the HOD weekend in Nottingham. We had a five figure offer on one of the cars on display and the single car advertised on the MB website was sold within 48 hours of the show ending. One previous owner now wants to buy another MB, another visitor has also asked to be added to the list of people that want emailing as soon as a car is advertised. I must say that the stand was much busier this year than last but this may be due to location 'who knows?' Hmmm...

Once again the picture will be worth a thousand words.

May I offer a BIG thank you to John, Chris and George for displaying their cars at the event and also to others that assisted over the weekend. Dan and Matt, and last but not least, the many Middlebridge owners 'present & past' that visited the stand over the weekend, we hope you all enjoyed yourselves.

Click each image for larger view