After a brief swing through The Azores, the Torrens carrying the KUMAKART is finally pointed towards Halifax! So far six nights at sea with 5 to 6 more to go!
Author Archives: mathan
MINI: Tracking the Ship
I admit, I’ve become a bit obsessed with tracking our the ship our car is on. Checking the logs, I have noticed a few times it’s slowed down to a crawl over the three days since it left Southampton. Comparing to earlier logs from Panama to Germany, I suspect the ship is having some engine troubles. Arrival in Halifax has already been delayed by two days already according to 2W. It is what it is! We are still getting the car way earlier than expected.
Here is the map so far:
MINI: Cars Live on YouTube
Yes, you can find Cars Live on YouTube. For your viewing pleasure:
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
MINI: Cruise Day 2
“After a leisurely drive around the Lido deck, we started a big party. Man those honkin’ Bimmers sure know how to party with their steins of good Bavarian bier! Us MINIs, could definitely keep up with our tasty British Stout.”
And there you have the latest Pixar Film – “Imported Cars”. Could you imagine what that would be like? LOL!
The car is in the Celtic Sea. Well, not in the actual water, but on the MV Torrens as it makes it’s way through the Celtic Sea and then through the Atlantic. Below was the placement of the ship about 3 hours ago. I have no idea what kind of updates we’ll see as it makes it’s trek across the Atlantic, I suspect we’ll get very few.
If you were to zoom out on the map at Marinetraffic.com, you don’t see a lot of updates until ships are near the Azores, and again near Newfoundland & Labrador, and Nova Scotia.
According to Wallenius & Wilhelmsen Logistics, the ship is now arriving on November 2nd. It is what it is, and these things take time.
I did notice that last night the ship had turned back to England briefly and was going at 3 knots and then all of a sudden it turned to continue it’s course across the Atlantic. That’s the little green blip just before the ship started going south.
MINI: Cruise Day
Today is our transatlantic cruise day from Southampton to Halifax… Well not for Scott and I, but for our MINI.
Some interesting factoids:
- Our MINI was the 33rd to be placed on the ship at 12:55pm – I’m not sure if they’re using UTC or British time (BST/GMT)
- They started loading at 12:17pm, the last MINI to be loaded was 2:40pm
- There are 180 MINIs that were supposed to be part of the shipment with a bunch flagged as “Return to Shipper” at 5:07pm, ours is not one of them. Doh! I hope nothing is up with the cars and that has to suck for the owners!
According to the Port of Southampton Vessel Traffic Services, the Torrens is set to sail at 10pm tonight from dock 44, which is in the Ocean Dock area.
MINI: The plates arrived
This is coming together way faster than I was anticipating. Scott received a package in our mail today and was was in it? Behold!
I do have to say, I prefer the font used online:
And I still say, Ontario needs to get more creative with their plates. BC, Alberta and Newfoundland & Labrador have beautiful multi coloured plates!
MINI: The ultimate package tracker
Forget UPS and FedEX, they’ve got nothing on this:
Our car has officially been ‘sold’ from Plant Oxford and is now in 
Southampton awaiting loading onto the MV Torrens which is a massive floating parking lot for cars and vehicles, in this case, travelling from Germany, Belgium and the UK to Canada and the United States.
Checking the weather in Southampton, the car is definitely going to be getting used to some cooler weather. We’re having similar weather in Toronto and Halifax. We’ll see what the next week brings.
Using Marinetraffic.com, we’ll be able to track the MV Torrens as it crosses the Atlantic.
The MV Torrens is a British-registered ship built in 2004. 200m length overall, beam of 32m, and has a gross tonnage of 61,321 tons
On voyage CA543-TRS it stopped in Bremerhaven, Germany; Zeebrugge, Belgium before arriving in Southhampton, UK on Sunday. Then sails to Halifax, Canada; New York City, USA; and then Brunswick, GA, USA; dropping off it’s automative cargo. Prior to being in Germany, it spent time in Peru and Panama.
MINI: Cars Live
Cars Live is a really cool broadcast from the BBC that documents the life of a car at… Plant Oxford, the primary home of the MINI Cooper.
The broadcast was done over two nights in the UK on October 20th and October 21st.
Our car was completed production on October 21 and was on the same production line as the show was filming – live! Though it is doubtful it got any camera time, there were a few VINs shown during the show that I was able to confirm on BIMMER.WORK and yes, our car was in fact finished production at the same time based on the VINs I checked out.
Some interesting things I learned from the broadcast
- No wonder the car comes with about 30km on it – Each car goes on a test drive to confirm it’s okay over several types of pavement
- MINI/BMW have their own train sets that send cars to Southampton for shipping overseas
- Each train set can carry 300 cars over half a kilometre long
- It takes 3 hours to get to Southampton
- There are 2 trains every day
- The cars leave within 24 hours of completion
- There are at least 5 to 10 people who drive you car before you do
- Tester
- Transport from MINI
- Transport off of the train in Southampton
- Transport on to the ship in Southampton
- Transport off the ship in Halifax
- Transport on to the train in Halifax
- Transport off the train in Halifax
- On to a truck
- Off the truck
- Two or three people at the dealer
This could mean, our car, barring any issues is actually in Southhampton awaiting loading on a ship.
This is exciting!
MINI: 11 Days
It’s now 11 days since we agreed to purchase our MINI and…
We have a production date according to Bimmer.work and it’s today! That means that over at Plant Oxford, or MINI is being built which takes 6 to 10 days although some threads have said this date is the date the drivetrain and chassis are married.
So it could mean, a new car has official entered into the world, rather than individual parts!
After that it takes a trip on a train to Southampton, boards a car transport ship and makes it’s way to the Halifax Auto Port where it will board another train to somewhere outside Toronto. If all goes will that takes 20 to 30 days.
That means we could actually have the MINI by December! Early Christmas gift for Scott and me?
Surprising given we were originally going to be locked into a November production date. It’s very nice to see us brought up early to October.
Now Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics has the following schedules from Southampton to Halifax. If production happens as I think it will, then I am guessing the car will be on the November 2nd or 8th sailing on the Tombarra or Toledo. October 25th would be too aggressive, but if production does mean that it’s coming off the production line as of today or tomorrow (22nd or 23rd), then it could mean we are on the Torrens!
You can enter your VIN in the Cargo ID field and it will confirm the ship, port of entry, etc…
MINI: Got our VIN
Yesterday my dealer told me that we have a VIN and passed it over to me.
The VIN is quite a powerful number right now because this allows me to track the creation of our new car. Sadly, BMW Canada nor MINI have a site I can login to to track this, like BMW in the US does.
That does’t mean having the VIN is for naught, for I can go to bimmer.work, enter the last 7 digits of my VIN and find all out kinds of stuff about my car, such as:
- It is indeed a left hand drive
- 5 doors
- It’ll have a B36M engine in it
- Manual transmission as ordered
- It is in Electric Blue (B86)
- We don’t know the Production Plant or Production Date yet, but I am pretty sure it will be Plant Oxford.
The site also confirms all of the standard equipment and options that we selected with the vehicle.