President's Message

As I write this message, my wife Josie and I have just returned from Amelia Island. We had a glorious time thanks to the hospitality and hard work of Mike Kunz of the MBUSA Classic Center and Valentine O’Connor, our club liaison at MBUSA, among others. If you can make the trip next year, I highly recommend it. We arrived on Friday and attended the Officers’ Dinner that was hosted by the Southern Stars Section that night. Saturday evening MBUSA hosted a black-tie dinner at the Ritz-Carlton. We were fortunate that our table was located next to the table occupied by none other than Sir Stirling Moss, who drove the 300SLR to an all-time record speed at the Mille Miglia in 1955. Also, Saturday evening, the Peachtree Section hosted a seafood dinner that we were able to pop into while on our way to the MBUSA dinner. A great time was had by all at each and every event.

Sunday, at the concours, I presented an award on behalf of MBCA to the most historically significant Mercedes-Benz. The car winning the award was the Blitzen Benz. It was built in 1909 specifically to set the land speed record, which it did on the sands of Florida. Now it had returned to Florida to be recognized as the true icon that it has become.

We hope to attend and have a presence at other major concours this year. Look for us at Keels and Wheels, May 3-4 in Seabrook, Texas; the Greenwich Concours, June 7; Meadow Brook Hall on August 3; and Pebble Beach on August 16. As I have written previously in this column, these efforts are all about improving awareness of MBCA. You can also help out by attending, being involved, and providing recruitment material to your local shows.

I have asked the MBCA National Business Office (NBO) to help in redesigning our website’s home page. It is no secret that our website needs a new look. The home page should be eye-catching so that a casual web surfer who may google the Mercedes-Benz Club will immediately feel compelled to linger a bit longer and hopefully join MBCA. By now, you should be getting the message that everything we are trying to do this year is to attract and keep new members, especially from a demographic that is sorely missing among our membership.

To that end, the Membership Committee has been hard at work crafting a specific brochure directed at AMG owners that showcases our performance involvement. This brochure can be utilized whenever and wherever there is a large contingent of AMG owners. We feel AMG owners are great prospects to join MBCA. Other brochures will also be created this year to accomplish the same end result: reaching out to largely nonexistent demographics within our club. For example, this year the Membership Committee and The Star will be emphasizing the family.

In this issue of The Star, you will see the announcement for the 2008 Raffle, which will include cars rather than cash equivalents. You may recall in my last President’s Message, I spoke about a concern for the poor return from the fall 2007 raffle. We are returning to cars rather than cash equivalents, as we seem to have lost the glamour in the last few raffles. We’re hoping a new CLK Cabriolet will elicit more interest this time. I’m asking all the sections and regions to advertise the raffle in their newsletters this spring to maximize exposure.

One of my duties as President is to name Committees and Committee Chairs. I decided we needed to bring back the Leadership Committee, which is in the capable hands of Laura Simonds, our Western Region Regional Director. Leadership and the mentoring of future leaders must be of prime importance as we go forward. Regional Directors, with the help of the Leadership Committee, will be contacting section leaders in order to schedule Regional Leadership meetings. I urge all section leaders to attend.

Lastly, it is with deep regret that I inform you of the passing of Cliff Floeck, a member of the Lone Star and Houston Sections. Cliff, you may remember, was our own traveling billboard with his fifty-three-foot long trailer. Cliff was a great and enthusiastic advocate for the marque and MBCA. His website and the writings of his travels and meetings throughout the U.S. were extremely well written and well read. I was looking forward to seeing him and his tractor-trailer at StarFest this year but, alas, it is not meant to be. We will all miss you Cliff.