RESIDENT’S MESSAGE SECOND QUARTER 2021
by Don Klug
Greetings fellow Finger Lakes Section MBCA Members,
What we think as normal is something we’re all looking forward to. It appears that some of the restrictions we have been living with are beginning to ease in 2021 with the introduction of the Covid vaccines. Progress!
However, the old normal has changed and as we regather for our social activities of club events expect to see some change. Shown above is a picture of what a normal Mercedes Benz Grill used to look like. Of course, a Mercedes Benz grill looks a bit different today. Our new normal will no doubt be different too.
The Sonnenberg Gardens Fathers’ Day car show will be June 20th and our club has agreed to set up our regular club section to display our cars. The annual picnic will again be hosted by longtime member ‘Red’ Kosinski, at his home in Scottsville on July 11th. This event is always a top notch gathering. Red supplies the meats and the club supplies an assortment of refreshments. Bring a dish to pass and your bathing suit. Red’s pool is beautiful. This year the picnic will also serve as our annual meeting, albeit a short one.
National MBCA Director at Large Jim Roberts has arranged for the 2021 Performance Driving Event at Watkins Glen, now re-scheduled for July 25th. Our club, National and the Lotus, Ltd have held this event for many years now on one of the most desirable tracks in North America. Set your calendars for these events.
As a club, we want to return to something social and normal. This of course means that we need champions willing to coordinate other events between August and October. For instance, how about another car rally trip in September or October?. This can be discussed at our picnic/ annual meeting.
Another item in need of discussion is membership. Discussions have been ongoing this past year from National down to regional levels. I am sharing with you here some of the numbers provided by North East Regional Director Drew Webb in upstate New York as well as National.
Our own FL Section has lost three members over all, dropping to 87. In 2020. Our neighbor to the west, Niagara Section have remained static at 110 while to the East, Hudson-Mohawk has increased 29 to a membership of 256.
Drew Webb also shared with all of the section presidents that at the end of 2020, MBCA National noted a member increase of 1,420 over 2019, an 8% increase. While this is good news, Drew Webb, noted that 3,489 new memberships in 2020 were from the rebate program offered through the National and Mercedes Benz dealerships partnership. National decided to shorten the lead time of membership that allowed immediately joining MBCA at a dealership to obtain a significant discount on a new MB vehicle. The time requirement has now been extended back to 30 days; it remains to be seen how much that extra waiting time will affect the ongoing membership increases. I suspect our new member numbers from the program will decrease.
Let’s hope that it still contributes to a fair number of new members; our individual section challenge will still be to retain a fair number of these new members by making them feel valued and welcome. New members should feel so pleased with us that they will want to continue membership in the club. Of course, there may be several different characteristics to new members. People buying cars at the dealer may be different car buyers than many of today’s younger Mercedes Benz vintage car buyers. Elsewhere in this newsletter Dave Tobin has shared a message titled “Generation Shift”, about who is purchasing vintage cars from long time Mercedes Benz’s owners and club members. Thank you, Dave.
Looking forward to sharing your most recent Mercedes Benz experiences. Happy driving.
President Don Klug
