From the President Feb 2012

We are now officially in the 2012 ARPCA season. By the time you read this, our first event (MidWinter Party) has been completed. This is always great way to begin our year. We also had our first “unofficial” event of the year with a gathering of folks to the Double Wide restaurant in the South Side to “watch” the 24 hours of Daytona. Actually this was just an excuse to get our of the house and meet and converse with our friends. Once again I heard from some of the spouses that they really didn’t want to go because they weren’t into racing. Once you attend you’ll find out that the race is very secondary. When we left, I didn’t have a clue as to who was leading or anything else. But I did have a lot of great conversations.
 

Another first for us this year is our new Rundschau team comprised of co-editors Iron Jack Purvis and Frank Buniciky. Our creative and print staff of Paul Nickoloff and Rob Hoffman will insure the continued quality of our newsletter. Paul has also agreed to be our club representative to Auto Palace and take over the Advertising chair. I again want to thank Nancy Lowe for her tremendous efforts in making our newsletter one of the best in PCA. I also want to thank Gary Morgan for assisting Nancy. I’m sure you will notice some changes and I encourage you to provide input to insure a quality piece and to improve our efforts.
 

Last year as most of you know our major effort was to establish record attendance and the largest contribution ever to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. I am proud to say (again) these goals were accomplished. Now with the beginning of the New Year I want to re-establish our P-3 program (Porsche Project for Patriots). This program has been very successful for us (and the recipients) in the past. Next time you are in the Sewickley Car Store, please note the flags and plagues that have been presented to our organization. I am very proud of our efforts and members. If you have a relative or friend presently serving in Afghanistan, please contact our P-3 chair; Judi Seiler. Our contributions go directly to our military members and not through an outside organization.
 

Please note in our newsletter our 2012 event schedule (you can also see this on our website). We will have five Driver Education track events (two more than last year – with the July 4th event at Sears Point in West Virginia as well as a co-sponsored event with NOR and Nelson Ledges and our Car Control Clinic. We will have an added Auto Cross venue at BeaveRun (can’t remember the new name). Our next social event will be our All-Member dinner where we “officially” present our new members. This is always one of our most enjoyable dinners and I hope the new members take advantage of their free dinner (and prizes) and that we have a great turnout from our present members to assist in their initiation.
We will be looking forward to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix in July and I am predicting (based upon last year’s efforts) that we will have 250 to 300 Porsches and will still have the most cars in the event. We are still looking for someone to chair this première event.
 

For those of you who are interested or may be in the area; the European Porsche Parade will be from June 6th to the 12th in Chantilly, France. Contact PCA for details.
 

Of course we will have our Wine and Shine and probably our Sake and Speed venues. Please contact us if you have any suggestions for other venues or come to one of our business meeting (usually held on the second Thursday of the month).