Classic cars on show for members of the community at Cowley Mini Plant

For the third year in a row Oxford will host Drive It Day and have invited the whole community to join in.

The event aims for classic car owners to get their vehicles out and promote manufacturing.

Tomorrow, from 10am to 4am the plant will be open to the public to admire classic Minis, Maestros and Montegos, but also celebrate the Rover 800's 30th and Rover SD1s 40th birthdays, which were both built in Oxford from 1986 to 1998,

Classic car enthusiast Tanya Field has organised the free event and said she expected about 150 cars to drop in on the day.

The Headington Quarry resident added: "The plant have kindly let us use the facility which is great.

"It's all about celebrating Cowley's car building heritage which is massive part of the city.

"The day is open for anyone in the community to come over at any time. They can have a cup of tea and a biscuit and speak to people who own a range of classic cars.

"It's worked well the past two years so we are really looking forward to everyone coming down tomorrow."

Last weekend a convoy of about 40 cars drove up to the British Motor Museum in Gaydon as part of the Pride of Longbridge event.

Originally the plans were to drive to Cofton Park, however the event was cancelled due to the wet weather.

Mrs Field said the weather didn't dampen the spirits of the convoy.

She added: "It turned out that micro Pride of Longbridge events popped up at several venues so we took the Cowley Convoy to the British Motor Museum at Gaydon who very kindly accommodated us at a moment’s notice.

"We were so relieved as we had four cars which had come from Europe to join the convoy so we didn’t want to leave anyone disappointed.

"e ended up taking around 40 cars to the British Motor Museum where we were joined by about another 150 displaced Pride of Longbridge cars.

"We all ended up having an excellent day celebrating the historical links between Cowley and Longbridge."