BMW CCA, Puget Sound Region
Board Meeting Minutes
March 7, 2002

The meeting was called to order by President Karl Seeger at 7:00 PM at Round Table Pizza in Redmond. Those in attendance were:

• Karl Seeger, President
• Lance Richert, Past President, Concours Chairman
• Lucetta Lightfoot, Zundfolge Editor
• Tom Cox, Treasurer
• Alan James, Member
• Doug Haussler, Member
• Ken Olson, Tour Coordinator
• Jacqueline Kahn, Track Events Director
• Greg Mierz, Roster Manager
• Ken Hill, Vice President
• Ken Wear, 02 Special Interest Group
• Miki Haraguchi, Web Meister
• Wes Hill, Member
• David Lightfoot, Secretary

Opening Comments
Karl welcomed everyone. Introductions were skipped because there were no new people in attendance.

News from National

Elections
Karl reported that Michel Potheau won the election for President. Many met him when he was in town last year for the national Board meeting.

Newsletter/Website Congress
The Web Meister/Newsletter Editor Congress will be held May 25th and 26th in Tucson. Lucetta and Miki both expressed interest in attending.

Member Survey
A total of 216 responses were received; an excellent result. A graph was provided of the quantitative responses. Ken Hill is compiling a more comprehensive report for next month. The Zundfolge was clearly the most important member benefit overall. Track events were very important to many but not important at all to many others. The comments will be beneficial. The notebook of the surveys will be circulated to Board members so that each can review the items relevant to their area of responsibility.

Tee Shirts
Lance reported that he received the deposit check from Tom. The order for 150 shirts will be placed this week. The shirts will be five colors. The Club cost is $10 per shirt; they will be sold for $15 per shirt starting with the Member Appreciation meeting.

Sponsorship Package
This will a package to educate potential sponsors of Club events. It will describe the range of Club activities and services plus the size of the Club. No progress has been made since the last Board meeting. Ken Olson will write a piece on rallies. The 02 video from KING 5 television might also become a part of the package.

General Meetings and Events

E30 M3 Tech Session and Video Night
Lance reported that the E30 Tech Session and Video Night on February 16th was a success. Twenty-seven E30 M3s showed up and there were 70 to 80 people.

Vintage Racing Motors
Karl received an email from Bill Spornitz, event chairman, that he is beginning to receive reservations for the event. Everything is set with Byron Sanborn for the event. An article appeared in the March Zundfolge and a promotional bulk email will be sent before the event on March 16th.

Karting Enduro
Miki said that registration has been open for two days for this March 24th event. Already she has five teams signed up. She can accommodate ten teams total.

Get to Know Your Club Meeting
This meeting will be held March 30th. A promotional article appeared in the March Zundfolge. There have been no responses yet. Board members need to be prepared to say a few words about their area of responsibility. There will be event flyers available. We will also have sign-up sheets for various committees. The new Club shirts will make their debut and will be available for sale. We have received posters from BMW NA to be used as door prizes. We will be getting some more goodies.

Griot’s Garage
Doug said that there would be a promotional article in the April Zundfolge. The first notice has been posted on the Club’s bulletin board. There have been 20 responses already. Crowd control is a bit of a concern. There will be free samples. Mark of Griot’s will provide order forms if people want to make purchases. The items will be shipped at no cost. There will be at least three demonstration stations for people to rotate through. There will also be several race cars on display, including a newly acquired Ferrari F1 car driven by Gilles Villeneuve. The date is April 6th.

Safety Seminar/Pacific Raceways
The Safety Seminar and Pacific Raceways informational session have been scheduled back-to-back on April 7th. An article is in the March Zundfolge. The Safety Seminar will start at 10:00 AM with Andy Collins and Don Kitch. They will cover helmets, gloves, shoes and harnesses. They will not be covering full-race gear or car equipment. After the Safety Seminar and a short break, we will get a presentation from Jason Fiorito, General Manager of Pacific Raceways (formerly SIR). This presentation will start about noon and last until about 1:00 or 2:00. We will have light refreshments but no lunch.

E36 Tech Session
An E36 Technical Session will be held May 11th at Car Tender. The May date was picked from three options because the April calendar is loaded but we have little scheduled in May.

SAE/WWU Visit
Ken Hill confirmed the date of June 8th. A tour up Chuckanut Drive along the Sound will be organized so that people from the Seattle area can have a pleasant drive to Bellingham.

Mini Meeting
David said that getting firm information about availability of the first cars was difficult. He will put a generic promotional article in the April Zundfolge and then tell people that notification will be via the bulk email system and the Club’s bulletin board. We won’t have sufficient warning in order to promote the event through the Zundfolge.

SAV Tour
Ken and Wes Hill will put together another off-road event on September 14th. It will be scenic and challenging, but tame enough that one could take an X5 and not scratch it. Last year we had lots of SUVs but no X5s; we’re hoping for our first this year.

Oregon Wine Tour
This will be a one or two-night trip scheduled for the weekend of September 28 and 29. Bill Linder and Tom Williams are planning it. A dinner for the group is planned. There will also be a stop at the aviation museum in McMinnville.

Washington Wine Tour
Karl is likely to lead this tour. It will be the weekend of June 22 and 23. The Winery Association in the Yakima Valley was so pleased with the result of last year’s tour that they are promoting this to other car groups.

Hornet Race
Wes Hill has bravely agreed to defend the Club’s honor in a Hornet Race on May 26th, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The place is Evergreen Speedway in Monroe. Hornet R&D is currently underway to make the Club’s entry the fastest yellow 2002 in the race.

Women’s Tech Event
Jacqueline has a technical/car care program put together by Denise McCluggage that might make for a good event. She’s going to take a closer look at it and report back.

Detail Session
Club members generally like to have a detailing session about a month before the Concours. It was decided to ask Exeter Garage whether they would be interested in hosting a session on June 29th. Tom Cox will contact Dennis Nolan at Exeter. If Dennis isn’t interested, he will contact Bradley’s.

02 SIG Events
Ken Wear reported that the 02/02/02 Drive tee shirts are available for sale. An 02 Tech Session will be held at GP Automotive in Everett. Ken will borrow some of the Club banners from Karl for the event. The Board authorized Ken to spend up to $100 on the event.
Ken said that the big event for this summer, the 02 Fest on July 27, is shaping up nicely. There are both a Touring Alpina and a factory Turbo supposed to come. Hotel arrangements have been made. The dinner location has not been finalized. An afternoon drive will be mapped out rally-style by Ken Olson.

Rob Torres’s 02 Fest West will be five days this year, September 24-28.

Historic Races
Lucetta reported that we will have a corral for the Historic Races at Pacific Raceway (SIR) on July 5-7th. The cost will be the same as last year. Each club will be allowed 20 cars per day. We will try to get more spaces as we did last year. The event continues to grow. This year’s featured marque will be Corvette and there are 14 Corvette clubs in the area. Money was authorized for Lucetta to buy the tickets from SOVREN.

E30 Picnic
Lance is working with Chris Chow, head of the E30 SIG, on organizing a picnic for June 23rd at Newcastle Park. He will be renting the covered picnic area. The expectation is 30 to 40 E30s will turn out.

Zundfolge
A reminder for the April issue deadline was sent out today, March 7th. The deadline is March 12th. Karl has received some samples from other chapters of contracts used with advertisers.

Roster/Membership
Greg reported that we have 2,844 members, including 262 associate members. We are growing at about 2% per month. There are over 1,000 good email addresses on the bulk email system.

Track Events
Jacqueline thanked Miki for getting the website updated with all the track information. This should save Jacqueline a lot of time answering questions.

The Instructor Clinic used a two-day format and this worked well. This was despite snow falling upon early arrivals on Sunday morning. We re-evaluated all our Instructors, something that hadn’t been done for a very long time. The special ProFormance Instructor day on March 4th also went well.

The new configuration of the track was discussed briefly. The exit to Turn 8 needs to be later in order to set up properly for Turn 9. Everyone will need a checkout ride on the new configuration.
The new management at the track has decided to charge $5,000 per day regardless of the time of year. This means the track rental for our February date was higher than expected but that later dates will be cheaper.

The August 4th Driver Training day at Pacific Raceways has been changed to August 3rd.
Registration for the May Novice School is now open. Jacqueline will send the registration form to Miki so that the form will be available on the web site.

Wes Hill will be the Contest Board Rep to ICSCC (International Conference of Sports Car Clubs or “Conference”) for the Club. Communication between Conference and the Club regarding policies, insurance, etc. will be with Karl. Conference typically works with individual club presidents. The Contest Board Rep deals with rules specific to racing.

Ken Hill noted that the Club bylaws are inconsistent with the Club’s track book. Unfortunately, we have a lot of track books printed in advance. Jacqueline will compare the two and come back with a recommendation to reconcile the two.

Banquet
Kevin Chow was not present. However, it was noted that not all of the banquet donors were given recognition in the Zundfolge. An effort will be made to give recognition in the April Zundfolge to all of the donors who were missed.

Tours/Rallys
Ken Olsen has been running the various legs for the upcoming Spring Rally. The Rally will be held April 27th. The rally will start in Woodinville and end in Anacortes. A group dinner will be held in Anacortes. The rally is limited to 45 cars.

Concours d’Elegance
Lance reported that Jill Skeels is working on the event poster. Robinswood Park has been paid for. We are likely to have a 1930s-era BMW-engined airplane at the event.
We will be able to accommodate 150 cars for the event. Lance will be sending judging criteria to registrants.

Treasurer’s Report
Tom said he needs circulation data from Greg to finish up the reports due to national at the end of March.

Tom has received some informal budgetary information, but not much. The signature cards have finally been completed.

The balance in the account is $23,420. This is after paying Pacific Raceways $12,500 to reserve our dates for the year. The $12,500 represents half of the track rental amount (five events at $5,000 per event) for 2002. We owe the second half of the rental for the Instructor Clinic, but we also have $10,000 prepaid toward events later in the year.

Web Site
Miki has been busy with error correction and pruning of old stuff from the site. New stuff is being posted timely. In a technical discussion not fully understood by the undersigned, Miki said, “the server sucks.” She is working on a fix which will include a better server.

Roundabout
Ken Hill—noted that many of the member surveys requested more technical information.
Lucetta—had extra Zundfolges for distribution.
Ken Wear—had the 02/02/02 Drive tee shirts available for sale.
Doug—is driving to Bimmer Fest in LA on April 20th. It’s a car show and tuners’ display. He’d welcome company on the long ride.
Wes—noted that Don Kitch thought the special Instructor day held on March 4th was one of the best groups he’s ever seen.
Karl—asked that people contact him in advance of Board meetings if they have agenda items. The agenda is getting very long given the number of activities the Club has going on.

During the course of the meeting it was noted, several times, that it was snowing hard. The last half of the meeting was handled in an expedited manner so that we could adjourn early. We did at 8:45.

Respectfully submitted,

David Lightfoot
Secretary