There are 4 videos total and all can be viewed at Whiteroof.tv (downloads to follow in a couple of days) or the WRR YouTube Channel.

We survived AMVIV and share a few stories about what happened plus covered the news from MotoringFile like we like to do, and since it’s been about 2 weeks, there is quite a bit of news.

It’s event central here at WRR! We have a great interview with our friend Gina Koutros from MINI USA. There is a little thing coming up this summer called MTTS in case you haven’t heard. Thanks to Gina for taking time out of her busy schedule for us, and you. Plus, we are on Dragon Watch! If you are going, you better make sure you are signed up! MINIsontheDragon.com is where you want to point your browser for the most up-to-date information.

Finally, we wrap up of AMVIV. Lots of great show here for you once again. And, as always, free of charge.

Watch for a few changes coming down the pipe. You iPhone and iPad owners should now be able to easily play the show directly from this page if you so choose. A little more testing is happening this week and then you can expect to see those changes at MF and Bimmerfile.com as well.

Woofcast 332: Download audio file (woof332.mp3)

Download | WRR @ iTunes | 24.2MB |52:48

Tons of show for you tonight! Todd, Chad and I are again joined by Michael from The Mail Buoy Podcast with a whole bunch of MINI stuff for you, and maybe a little bit of Toyota stuff.

AMVIV. Do I need to say more? And, if you want Chad to bring you anything from Detroit Tuned, you might want to hit him up this week.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by MINI of Ontario for their grand opening. It was great to see all of you. While I was there, I had them do some work on my MINI and talk about it tonight. Worth a listen.

Woofcast 329: Download audio file (woof329.mp3)

Download | WRR @ iTunes | 21.6MB |47:13

If you aren’t you should be. I’m sure going through the program that Agro recently posted will help.

AMVIV is A MINI Vacation in Vegas happening the last weekend of March, 2010 at Aliante Station in North Las Vegas. For information and details visit the website at www.amviv.com

New update from Andrew ‘Agro’ Ross about AMVIV7, happening March 25th – 28th, 2010. In case you missed it, we actually talked to Agro during Woof 308 so you can go back and listen if you haven’t already.

Hi everyone. It’s been a while I know, but I finally have some AMVIV news for you.

We have signed a hotel contract! We’re moving away from Palace Station this year, to another property in the Station Casinos family. We’re going to Aliante Station which is a brand new, absolutely beautiful hotel casino. The hotel part is a bit smaller than Palace, and we will have the entire hotel blocked out for our attendees. Yes, if you see someone in the hotel elevator, they will be another AMVIV attendee.

The parking garage is nicer than Palace’s in several ways.

1st, it’s quite a bit bigger so we can have the Boot N Bonnet show all on the top floor and actually have space to park well over 100 attendee MINIs up there at the same time.

2nd, it has power more easily available than at Palace, so more vendors will be able to have power at their booths.

3rd, it has proper drainage so the detailer can be on the top floor without worrying about getting other cars wet.

4th (and best in my opinion) the ramp up to the 6th floor is a straight shot, so no more driving in circles through the garage to get up top! This also means that vendors with large trailers will be able to get them up the ramp and have them actually at the BNB instead of 6 floors below.

5th, 2 sets of elevators.

6th, a sound system we will be able to tap into for announcements.

The rooms at Aliante are gorgeous with all the amenities you’d expect from a new resort property in Las Vegas. And to sweeten the deal, the rate is lower than you paid last year at Palace. Rooms are $99 per night plus taxes. You can book a room by phone at 1-877-477-SOAR (7627) and use group code S03MINI or book online with this link. The hotel only has 200 rooms, so you if you want to make sure you’re staying at the “home hotel”, you might want to go ahead and book early.

AMVIV 7 dates are March 25th-28th, 2010 and the group rates are good from March 20th to March 31st so you can make a real vacation of it if you want to.

We haven’t decided yet if we are going to have a banquet dinner this year. The results of the survey many of you completed were inconclusive as to whether we should do it or not, however the prices we have from Aliante for food look like if we DO have a banquet this year, tickets will probably run around $36 or $37 a head, which is 1-2 dollars less than last year in a much nicer room.

If you have strong feelings that we SHOULD have a banquet this year, please email me and let me know. The low attendance last year meant that the SCMC wound up paying for the banquet room and actually lost money on the entire event, so we are only going to have the banquet if we are reasonably sure of at least 500 tickets sold. If the banquet doesn’t happen, the prizes will be given away at the Boot N Bonnet Show or possibly at some other sub-event.

The other thing I need include here is this:

Do you want to get a free room at AMVIV7? How about a free shirt in the special “event staff” color?

Well here’s your chance! Once again we are asking the MINI community to help us out with the designs for the AMVIV shirt, hat and book cover. The person who submits the winning design will receive 2 nights free at Aliante Station during AMVIV7 (March 2010), a shirt with your design printed on it in the staff shirt color and worldwide recognition as the designer of the 2010 AMVIV shirt, hat and book cover. Your shirt back design can include your signature or (small) company logo if you would like to promote yourself or your business.

This year’s theme will be “Lucky number 7” and we’ve been throwing around ideas like dice with MINIs for the spots, slot machines, cards and such. The designs will have to work on the regular color shirts (red this year) and on the staff shirts (yellow) but otherwise, it’s up to you.

If you are interested in this, please email me at AMVIVcontest@gmail.com for specs and requirements and such. If you want to see what past designs look like, head over to see the past winners!

That’s all I have for now. Keep an eye on your inbox for more updates. And make sure you let your favorite MINI vendors know that you want to see them at AMVIV. The more they know that people want to see them here, the more likely they are to attend.

See you in March,

Andrew Ross aka Agro

It’s been a while since you heard from me, but it’s about the time that we start seriously planning AMVIV for next year. The Sin City MINI Club has a new President this year (welcome and congratulations to Mark Finn) and we are contemplating a few changes to mix things up a little and keep the event fresh for those of you who have been here several times.

I have put together a survey on SurveyMonkey.com. The results are aggregated and not identifiable as having come from a particular person or even location, so please feel free to be honest.

As you can imagine, response to the survey was huge. So huge in fact that it filled up the database of the first survey. Not to worry, you can still give your feedback. You don’t have to sign up, provide your email address or anything. Follow the links below to help out.

If your last name starts with the letters:

• A-H take this survey
• I-P use this link
• Q-Z take this one

Like I said, it only takes a few minutes and your feedback will greatly assist the AMVIV Planning Committee in creating the next AMVIV! Making it better than it was. Better. Stonger. Faster.

Todd and I were there. You saw the photos and the video, right? I mean, we were in Vegas for the whole weekend. Heck, we even did a live show. And that show is the missing Woofcast; number two hundred ninety one. Performed live in front of about 12 people.

A show that Todd and Sherwin both recorded. One via audio, one via video. Great.

Or, maybe not. Todd’s MacBook was unruly that day and produced a recording that sounded like it was filtered through steel wool and crushed brick. When checking the audio from Sherwins camera, it sounded like we woke up after a night of cigar smoking and gargled with coal and razor blades.

To make matters worse, we couldn’t get our schedules together last week to do a show.

I have looked at most of the video and there is some there that’s not horrible that I will be uploading to WhiteRoof.tv later in the week.

We will be recording a show this week for sure. It’s looking like Saturday and I’ll try to talk Todd into letting us do it live.

Don’t worry, you can still go over to Motoringfile and catch up on the news, or go through the Archives here. MINI United is coming up, now would be a good time to listen to episodes from ’07 you might have missed.

Full download to follow later today at WhiteRoof.tv.

This episode we cover news, as always, from Motoringfile.com, but not so much with Gabe’s new car pictured here. You can, however, read about it here (pt 1) and here (pt 2).

Plus a quick AMVIV wrap-up.

But what about Woof291? You see, we recorded it live from Vegas. But, if I’m honest, it’s listenable. Not to worry because we did capture it on video. You don’t care about the video, but the audio is awesome and I will be posting that this coming weekend.

Woofcast : Download audio file (woof292.mp3)

Download | 17.3 MB | 37:39 | WRR @ iTunes

We’ve been working hard to get everything up and posted for you! All of the video (so far) is up at WhiteRoof.tv. Here is a sample.

You can check out the photos here. Be sure to do a search at Flickr for AMVIV as there are a TON of great photos from some of the best MINI photographers in the country!

We still have audio and a little more video that you aren’t going to want to miss. We did a live show from AMVIV that some of you caught online plus camera were rolling for the banquet! All of that will be coming up later in the week.

The tentative schedule has gone up if you are wondering what it is you want to do. Of course Todd and I will be there, recording Woofcast 291 LIVE from the upper deck of the Palace Station before taking off to the Show and Shine. Expect things to get started right around noon. For those of you not able to make it, keep an eye on the sites for the live feed.

We hinted at this during Woof 290, but there will not be a regular show tonight. With today being the start of Todd’s birthday extravaganza and Michael or Gabe not being available, it would only be me, and that would be fairly boring. I will put up a Best of WRR in the feed on Monday for you to tide you over.

I’m going to posting quite a bit to Twitter, including the occasional photo from my phone. You can also follow along on Facebook. There will be photos and video too! Keep an eye out for those.

Don’t forget the new White Roof Radio page at Facebook either!. It’s set up so that you can share photos and videos with other WRR Fans, plus I’ll be putting a few things there as well.

1 week. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I can’t wait!

AMVIV is just about a week away! Listen in for Todd’s tip for getting a room in Vegas if you missed out on the great rate Palace Station was offering. There is still time to register for the event if you haven’t already. Even if you don’t register, you should still think about going, but remember, if you don’t register, you won’t be able to attend the banquet. Tickets for that are presale only.

If you do decided to go, be sure to be around the upper deck of Palace Station on Saturday because we will be doing an honest to goodness live show. Woofcast #291 or #292, depending on what happens this week.

Of course, we cover news of the week from Motoringfile.com. If you were wondering what a Space Box is, here you go. Of course, if you are looking for something more practical, check out the image above, sent in by our good friend Jim Peterson, The “Kernel” of C.O.R.N.

More on AMVIV to follow early next week. Stay tuned!

If you missed it, I’ve set up a few White Roof Radio page at Facebook, with links to other cool places on Facebook, including the AMVIV group. Come join us!

Woofcast 290 : Download audio file (woof290.mp3)

Download | 21.4MB | 46:39 | WRR @ iTunes

Be sure to find us and say hi. We are going to want to talk to everyone!

Also, I have been warming up WhiteRoof.tv for any video that we might capture. New gear that takes HD video as well as a little help this time around.

=============

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know what we’re up to with AMVIV and remind you of a few things.

1. Palace Station is NOT going to close or be bought by Boyd before AMVIV.

2. The group rate at Palace ends for the final time THIS FRIDAY, March 6th. If you want to stay at Palace where all the action will be, go here and book your room.

3. Registrations are up to 242 as of this morning (3/2/09) so while we are a bit behind last year, we’re still looking at a very respectable turnout, on par with or even ahead of the 2007 event.

4. The event book has now gone to the printers, so any vendors who sign up now won’t be in the book. We are still taking vendor registrations, so encourage your favorite vendors who aren’t on the www.amviv.com/sponsors.htm page yet to sign up.

5. We will be ordering the event shirts and hats this week, so if you want to guarantee that you will get your size shirt, or that you will get a hat (the extras usually sell out pretty fast in Vegas) you might want to pre-order now.

6. Just a reminder than Banquet tickets are NOT available in Vegas. If you want to attend, you MUST pre-order and pay for your tickets.

7. Event registrations will close at midday (12pm) West Coast time on Friday, March 20th. No exceptions. That includes vendor registrations. After noon on the 20th, no more banquet tickets will be available.

8. MINIUSA has generously decided to sponsor the Friday evening “Meet the MINIacs Mixer” and will be providing the food. Many thanks to our favorite car company!

9. Phil Wicks has asked me to pass on to you all that the Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch will, by AMVIV, be the permanent home of the Phil Wicks Driving Academy. Yes, now, any time you come to Vegas, you can do a trip to Pahrump and get some top quality MINI-focused driving instruction. I’m attaching the announcement from Phil. To go along with this news, Phil has asked me to forward this:

“Attached is a flyer announcing our home at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch. Can you please send info out to AMVIV attendees stating that they can come to the track as our guest — no fees at all including gate — to take part in touring laps? Also, the first 50 cars that register with us either before the event at Racerwicks@AOL.com or at the registration desk we will have at the hotel in the vendor area will receive free lunch in the clubhouse at the track — no cookout food — real food!

Thanks!

Phil Wicks“

1. The weather in Vegas is already BEAUTIFUL! In the 70s with sunny skies and light breezes. For those of you dealing with snowstorms, you’re welcome to head on down early if you want.

2. This year, we are organizing a judged Show and Shine car show for the 1st time. The Show and Shine will be held at SAFE House in Henderson and will benefit SAFE House. There is a $20 entry fee, paid directly to SAFE House which is a charity that helps victims of domestic violence. As well as the funds raised from the entry fees, the Sin City MINI Club and Desert MINI of Las Vegas will each donate $2,000 to SAFE House. If you want go and look at the MINIs in the show, entry is free, though donations will be gratefully accepted of course.

Download the annoucement here

For the competitors, the categories are:

• Best in show
• Best graphics
• Most YOU-nique
• Most likely to get impounded

I guess that’s about it for now. Keep listening to www.WhiteRoofRadio.com and checking back at www.amviv.com for updates. If you know someone who is into MINIs or Minis who doesn’t know about AMVIV, please forward this email to them.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Andrew Ross aka Agro

President, Sin City MINI Club www.SinCityMINIClub.com

Coordinator, A MINI Vacation In Vegas www.AMVIV.com

<<…>>

For those of you that are concerned about the Station Casinos, please be sure to pay very close attention to the first paragraph.

I was just cruising through the attendee list and see that Canada will be representin’ big time, as will the PDX area. Of course, White Roof Radio will be there too.

Hi everyone. I’ve had a few worried emails from people concerned about Station Casinos bankruptcy talks. I just got off the phone with Connie at Palace and she assures me that this is no problem for us. Palace Station will be operating exactly as in prior years for AMVIV and we have nothing to worry about on that front.

On a different but still Palace related note, I convinced her to extend the group rate on the hotel by another week and a half. Our pickup is lower than in past years, so they are willing to work with us to get you the best rate we can. I know that people are concerned about finances and such, but this is a cheap Vegas weekend, especially if you can mostly stay away from the machines and tables.

How to book:

This year, you can book your room online at the group rate. Use this link.

Call the Palace Station Reservations Office at 1-800-634-3101

Use reservation ID “PCIAMV9″ or identify yourself as a Sin City MINI Club attendee

Reservations MUST be made by 2/22/09

All room rates are plus tax.

Discounted rates apply to rooms booked for 03/24/2009 – 03/31/2009.

I want to make sure that you are all aware of the car show this year. In past years, we have held an “attendee voted” car show at the Boot N Bonnet Show with trophies at the Saturday evening banquet. This year, instead, there will be an actual judged car show held at a local charity’s facility in Henderson. The charity is Safe House which helps the victims of domestic abuse. In this economy, domestic abuse often rises while the funding for helping its victims dries up. So the Sin City MINI Club is working with Safe House to help get them some funds while adding something new to AMVIV. If you want to enter your car in the show, you will pay a small entry fee DIRECTLY TO SAFE HOUSE STAFF when you get to the show. This fee will be fully tax deductible as a charitable contribution. If you want to come down and look at the cars, there is will be no fee, though if you want to donate to Safe House, they will gladly accept your donations. The Sin City MINI Club will also be making a donation of some of the AMVIV proceeds to Safe House. Find out more about Safe House at safehousenv.org

To get more spectators to the show, the Poker Run will end at the car show. Please stay around and make the show a success.

We have had a smaller signup of vendors this year than in the past few years. If you go to the vendors page at amviv.com/sponsors.htm and your favorite MINI vendor isn’t listed, contact them and ask them if they are planning on going to AMVIV. They are running businesses, and if they think it will cost them more to attend than they can earn here, it doesn’t make sense for them attend. Let them know that you want to see them here and that you want to buy from them.

We are also tracking a bit behind last year for event registrations. As of Feb 10th last year, we had about 230 cars registered. This year we are at 171. If you are planning on coming and haven’t registered yet, please go ahead and do it. The registration count is something that vendors use to work out if it makes sense to attend and the SCMC uses to work out how many books we need to print and how many registration packets we’ll need to make up. If we get 100 in the last couple of days of registrations, we might run out of books or lanyards or some of the other goodies.

That’s about it for now.

Hopefully, I’ll see you here next month.

Andrew Ross aka Agro

President, Sin City MINI Club www.SinCityMINIClub.com

Coordinator, A MINI Vacation In Vegas www.AMVIV.com

Woofcast 282: Download audio file (woof282.mp3)

Download | 19.4MB | 42:27 | WRR @ iTunes

If MTTS is finished, it must mean it’s time to start thinking about A MINI Vacation in Vegas. Sure, it’s still 8 months away, but it’s never too earlier to start planning a trip to Vegas!

In response to the steep price jump in room rates for AMVIV5, we have negotiated and sliding rate for AMVIV6. The early birds save $20 a night! If you book your room by January 25th, you pay $79 for courtyard rooms and $119 for Tower rooms, which is $10 per night less than in 2008.

That’s a smokin’ deal if you book early.

And, if you are a designer-type that is looking for the chance to attend AMVIV mostly free of charge, plus get a ton of free promotion for you or your company, you might be interested in this.

Many of you will be aware that Dee from CooperCards designed the AMVIV5 shirt, hat and event book cover. We have decided to make this an annual occurrence, having someone in the MINI community design the event artwork.

So, design something cool for AMVIV this year and get 2 free room nights during AMVIV and a ton of free promotion! Yet another smokin’ deal.

All of this information can be found at AMVIV.com.

• AMVIV Design Contest / AMVIV.com

Motorkult TV – Episode 11: White Roof Radio at AMVIV 2008 from bmpmedia on Vimeo.

In HD no less. Thanks for the interview!

If you are looking for a great automotive podcast, be sure to check them out at here.

+Episode 11: White Roof Radio at AMVIV!

Todd also got the chance to talk to Jack Belcher, SCMM member who has actually driven his MINI at the Bonneville Salt Flats and holds the record for a MINI through the traps! He will be running again later this year during Speed Week.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for some lost audio from MINI United. You won’t be disappointed!

The last from AMVIV: Download audio file (AMVIV5.mp3)

Download | 3.7MB | 8:03 | WRR @ iTunes

For those of you that are fans of Roberts work, this one will not let you down. Robert talked to a lot of people, saw lots of MINIs and brought you along for the ride.

Enjoy!

Robert in Vegas: Download audio file (robertamviv.mp3)

Download | 45:09 | 41.3MB