SMALL but perfectly formed, lovingly restored and in some cases dazzlingly souped-up.

Hundreds of Minis were driven down to Brighton seafront in an annual celebration of the iconic car.

The London to Brighton Mini Run came to a stop in Madeira Drive yesterday, where models from the 1960s to the present day were proudly lined up.

Owen Fletcher, 29, had driven his white Mini Traveller all the way from Birmingham, camping with other participants in Crystal Palace on Saturday before undertaking his Mini adventure on Sunday morning.

The mechanic bought the car for £500 ten years ago; it fell apart after about six months and languished in a garage until he recently started toiling to get it back on the road.

He said: “This time last year I booked it in for the show – so this was the ambition, the target.

“I don’t know if I intended to have this as my first car; it just turned out that way.

“The drive was pretty good; you could not wish for better weather for it.”

Mark French, 52, from Berkshire, drove his daughter’s Mini City 1983, which he has “spent as much time as I could” restoring from its battered state on buying. He added: “It was really fun just seeing all the Minis on the road and people looking on.”

The annual rally has been running for 30 years, organised by the London and Surrey Mini Owners Club.

It ends in a car show from Brighton Marina to the Pier, with a contest for classes including commercial, heavily modified, and classic.

The official route runs down the A23, and many drivers camp in Crystal Palace the night before.

Bob Marchant, from Brighton, was judging the commercial class, said he was impressed by what he had seen.

He said: “Each year the standard gets higher and higher and particularly the handiwork on the cars. Many of them are very old – we have got Minis here from the 1960s.

“How good they are next to what they were years ago. Bear in mind a lot of the people doing these cars are of limited resources, but passion that they put into this is enormous.”

Isabeau Walker, a consultant paediatric anaesthetist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, drove a deep yellow Mini trailed by fellow doctors on bicycles.

The team was raising sponsorship money for the charity Lifebox, which works to make surgery safer around the world, focusing on improving training and equipment in poorer countries.

It is trying to provide pulse oximeters – which alert doctors if a patient’s oxygen levels are too low while they are under anaesthetic – to hospitals around the world.

Dr Walker said: “It is vital equipment but it is expensive and for very small hospitals it is beyond their means.

“We did a big procurement process and said we will buy 10,000 of these; how much can you sell them to us for, so we are procuring them in bulk.

I drove with my sister – we had a good old gossip.

“It was lovely, a good atmosphere, there were lots of people by the side of the road waving on the Minis. “People here have been interested; we have been explaining what we have been doing and a lot of people have been very generous.”