At the Wheel – From the President

Gene Jurick

The Road Ahead

This past fall I was elected as a director at large of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America and subsequently elected as the club’s president at the national board meeting in November. To introduce myself, I have been a member of the MBCA for just over 40 years, belonging to three different sections and active in virtually all leadership positions during those years. I am one of the founders of the Peachtree Section in Atlanta, Georgia, and later became a member of the North Texas Section, where I am currently a member.

Between those periods, I was part of the Orange County Section in California for 18 years. For the past five years I have been the regional director of the South Central Region, which includes most of five states with 10 sections. During those years, I gained a wealth of knowledge and expertise in all aspects of club operations. I attribute my efforts to take a visionary approach to leadership rather than a business-as-usual approach to the accomplishments I’ve achieved.

I follow a very skilled and successful Executive Committee and National Board of Directors into my new position; this will make the transition easier and make it possible to move forward with little loss of momentum. However, to ensure continued growth and well-being for our club and all its members, we have to meet several strategic challenges.

First, after growing slowly for nearly 10 years, our membership base is beginning to decline. Without a solid and growing membership base, we don’t really have a club. We need to retain our long-term members, convert new members to active long-term members and continuously attract new members. Long-term members are among our most loyal; as long as we address their desires by providing the activities and events that meet their needs, they will continue to be loyal. Meeting the interests of newer members with activities and benefits that interest them plays an even larger role. Attracting more prospects to join the club will require effective marketing strategies at both the local and national levels. Strategic goals and follow-up plans will be required to attract and retain our members.

Second, we are seeing a shift in the demographics of our membership and vehicles that they drive, and this change has only just begun. In earlier years, most of our members owned older Mercedes-Benz vehicles and many of them cared for and worked on them regularly. Today, the majority of cars at a club event are new or nearly new; few owners work on their own cars. However, whether our members work on their cars or simply drive them, their enthusiasm for the cars and the camaraderie at club events is what keeps them as members in the MBCA. To be responsive to the desires of all our members, we must be strategic in selecting, planning and presenting both local and national activities.

Third, the automobile industry is experiencing cataclysmic technological change in areas such as electrification, autonomous driving and connectivity. This change is happening rapidly, and it will affect us and our club. Even though some of these changes seem far off, they are taking place; the club should help our members understand and adapt to them. I’m told that when Bertha Benz took her historic 106-kilometer cross-country drive in 1888, she had to go to the drugstore to buy fuel; look where we are now.

My point is that our members are the core of our club and the reason that it exists. To maintain our membership, we need to implement short- and long-term strategies to meet the interests of both current and future members.

I am looking forward to my term as National President of MBCA and to the challenges of meeting the responsibilities of the job. Many of my very best friends were made in the MBCA and I welcome the opportunity to make many new friends around the country during my term of office.