Minis in America

New Owen Clarke production Open 6.5 to be built in the States

A new Production (Series) Mini - the M65TM - designed in the UK-based naval architects Owen Clarke Design, and built in the United States, will be sailing late summer 2005. The M65 is being developed by The Mini Store (TMS), a company formed in 2004 to bring the Mini to the North American market. While popular in Europe, the Mini class is relatively unknown in the United States and the M65 will be the first production Mini ever built there.

TMS's objective in developing the M65 is to offer an affordable, trailerable, domestic built Mini that will appeal to a broad range of sailing enthusiasts in the North America. While the M65 is being designed to meet all Classe Mini technical and safety specifications, TMS believes the market in the US and Canada for the boat is far broader than Europe, with many prospective customers having no interest in competing on the European Mini circuit.

The M65 will be a trailerable boat that can be kept in the driveway or dry sailed, simple and exciting to day sail or weekend sail, but also a boat that can be single or double-handed across thousands of miles of open ocean. A key design consideration for the M65 is to make it easily trailerable on US highways - when trailered the M65 will be less than 8.5ft wide, which will not require a wide load permit.

"The initial interest in the M65 has been quite significant" said Jeffrey Dingle, TMS's Founder and President, "considering we have not begun to formally market it. We have had dozens of inquiries over the past several months from across the US and Canada, as well as from South Africa and New Zealand." TMS is in discussions with individuals in each of these markets who are also interested in being agent/dealers.



Owen Clarke has completed preliminary design work on the M65. Final design work will be completed in April. "We've been pulling out all the stops on this project. It's a very important boat for us and a hugely exciting project in three ways: I'm a big fan of the Mini class in which I will be doing some racing again this year, it's our first production race boat and it's being built in the world's largest sail boat market," said Merfyn Owen. TMS has supplied bid packages to a wide range of boat builders across the US, from small to large. Firm pricing will be published within the next several weeks. Based on preliminary build cost information that has been provided, TMS expects the M65 (without sails) to be priced under US$40,000, comparable to other similarly-sized boats in the 'sport boat' market in the US.

To foster development of the Mini in North America, TMS has been developing an online community at minisinamerica.com and will launch an e-commerce site in April at ministoreusa.com that will offer virtually anything one needs to build, sail or race a Mini. TMS's official partners and suppliers currently include Lewmar, US Spars, Spinlock, Samson, Facnor, Gill and Boye Knives, with several other companies to be added shortly.

For 2006, TMS expects to have several North American Mini races on the calendar. With so few Minis expected to be sailing in US and Canadian waters for the 2005 season, it is unrealistic any kind of meaningful race can be developed this year. Instead, TMS is working on getting Minis invited to several of the established regattas in 2005.

Information, preliminary specifications, drawings and renderings of the new M65 can be found at www.m65usa.com

For additional information, please contact:
Jeffrey Dingle
t: 781.639.8090
m: 617.407.5834
e: jdingle@minisinamerica.com