At the Wheel
Members Make the Club
From the President – Gene Jurick
Of late, it seems as if every one of my President’s messages has started with a weather report. The last several months have featured every type of weather from rain, hail, tornados and then flooding. As challenging as the weather has been, Mercedes-Benz Club of America sections around the country are very active. The list of events that are planned or already completed is truly impressive.
I have had the opportunity to visit and to some degree participate in several of these events. The most recent of these was the Sandhills Motoring Festival held over the Memorial Day weekend in Pinehurst, North Carolina. This three-day event was its second annual presentation. The Sandhills Motoring Festival was created in 2018 by Mercedes-Benz Club of America members Steve Redwine and Bill Faison in cooperation with Porsche Club of America member Marvin Waters. The second year’s show was flawlessly planned and went off without any obvious issues.
The actual concours display took place on the streets of the historic Village of Pinehurst. Mercedes-Benz and Porsche made up the largest group of vehicles, but other marques included Ferrari, a 1966 Ford GT40 and Rolls Royce, just to mention a few. Of special interest to MBCA members was that a nearly perfect Mercedes-Benz 1953 300S Coupe owned by Guy Lewis took home the Best of Show Touring award.
In the last issue of The Star, I commented on the upcoming MBCA Spring Raffle. By the time you read this article, someone in the club will have won the raffle. The Mercedes-Benz featured is the new 2019 GT 63 four-door coupe. The base price for this car is $139,500 and all tickets are priced at $50. There’s no limit on the number of tickets you can purchase. The significant feature is: on average, about 5,000 tickets are sold for the raffles. I don’t know of anything with a prize like this that has odds that are so good. It’s something to think about: An MBCA member wins every raffle. We haven’t selected the vehicle for the Fall Raffle yet. Any suggestions?
I usually have a comment about our membership. I do this because everything the MBCA is about, is dependent on, and for the benefit of the members of the club. The members who don’t renew their memberships fall overwhelmingly into the group that has never attended an MBCA section or other club event. I mention this because our current active members, probably you, have the best access to these members. You may be a good influence in encouraging them to give an event a try; they might like it. The leadership of your section can guide you in reaching out to these members.
Adding new members is another area where our current member base can significantly affect member recruitment. Sadly, many Mercedes-Benz owners don’t even know there is a Mercedes-Benz Club of America. This is even true of many Mercedes-Benz dealers and their employees, too. This is a problem that local sections can be instrumental in solving.
Having said that, there is another benefit of which many of our active members are unaware: When members refer a new member, a free month of membership is added to their membership. It’s a simple matter of adding your name and member number to the application form you give to a prospective member-applicant – or you can give that person your name and member number to use to join online at www.MBCA.org. Many new members do join online: it’s easy and instant and they can immediately start enjoying the benefits of being an MBCA member. They can even save the cost of their membership – or more – with member discounts the next time they visit their Mercedes-Benz dealer. And, if you recruit enough new members, you may not need to pay for your own future membership.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing many of you at upcoming events.