The Pride of Longbridge, 17th
April 2010
This year’s Pride of Longbridge will take
place in Cofton Park Longbridge on Saturday the 17th of April from
9.30am until 4pm. This is the nearest Saturday to the date on which
the majority of the Longbridge workforce was made redundant five
years ago.
Wholly organised by the
Austin Federation, this year’s event uses a slightly different
format than in previous years. In this the Austin Federation
acknowledges with thanks the financial support of the Longbridge
and Northfield Wards of Birmingham City Council.
There will be no
large convoy to the event. However, if participants wish to meet
friends and travel to Cofton Park together the Avoncroft Museum
(B60 4JR) and coffee shop will be open from 9.00AM to serve as a
brief gathering point and refreshment stop before participants
travel on to Cofton Park by a very attractive route. Austin
Federation marshals will be on hand with a route map from Avoncroft
Museum to Cofton Park until 10.30AM. Avoncroft Museum cannot
provide space for people to wait for a long period of time for
others to join them.
All vehicles with a Longbridge connection are welcome, from Austin
7s to Rover 75s, MGFs to Austin Devons, MGBs to Vanden Plas
Princess Limousines. Famous makes likely to be involved include,
Vanden Plas, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, Honda and MG, as well as the
core Longbridge brand of Austin. Please join us in Cofton Park, opposite
the Longbridge plant, to mark the fifth anniversary of the closure
of MG Rover.
Longbridge closed
abruptly in 2005, making a whole community redundant. Since then
the Longbridge area has gone through enormous change, with workers
retraining and much of the area being redeveloped for a new future
in modern industries and education. The plant is producing cars
again, albeit on a much smaller scale, but the community as whole
remains both optimistic and proud of the century of innovation and
mobilisation ‘The Austin’ (as locals will often call it) fathered
between 1905 and 2005. No other UK plant is as significant to
British and world motor industry history and no other car maker
produced iconic egalitarian cars that motorised the masses and
revolutionised the very idea of what a car could be, twice, in 1922
and 1959. The Pride of
Longbridge rally is a celebration of those great achievements and a
chance for the community to gather in Cofton park alongside the
plant and enjoy the vehicles they and their ancestors
created. Please come
and join us if you have a vehicle with a Longbridge connection
(remember the factory built engines for cars as diverse as MGBs and
Jensen 541s) and be part of an event that is as much a pilgrimage
as a car rally. Or just
come and enjoy the range of vehicles attending, Cofton Park is a
public space and will remain so on the day of the event, something
which helps give Pride of Longbridge its unique community
feel.___
The
web site of the Austin Federation
http://www.austinmotor.co.uk/
Avoncroft
Museum of Historic Buildings, Stoke Heath, Bromsgrove,
Worcestershire, B60 4JR
Cofton
Park, Low Hill lane, Longbridge, B31
2BQ Birmingham
Please let your friends know of the changes to this years
event