Dear Members,
Every year March seems to be one of our busiest months and 2019 was no different!
We started the month with a run down the Great Ocean Road to Apollo Bay featuring E30s. We took one of my original E30s out for a run and had a great time, enjoying the trip down and back and really nice lunch at the Apollo Bay Hotel.
The March Members Meeting was a very interesting show and discussion about the BMW factory and production processes in general from our Secretary Lawrence, who spent 20 years as a Production Engineer and was a great turnout for an interesting night.
The display season is still in full swing, whilst the weather is still fine, and March sees two of our most popular display events. The first one is at the Phillip Island Classic, the largest historic race meeting in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a fantastic event where major sponsors Shannons invite Clubs to put on a display and offer pace car laps on Sunday as well. Both Saturday and Sunday we had a lot of cars join us, with all the banners and flags up you couldn’t miss us up on the hill. Even some of the drivers commenting that it was great to have the club there and so visible, supporting all the BMW’s on the track.
Always one of the most popular displays, is at the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix. We are only allowed to have a maximum of 20 cars and it is always over subscribed! We had a fantastic display, with the cars ranging from Lawrence’s 700 (the car that saved BMW) right through to Walter’s new M5 Competition. We had a lot of interest and even gained a few new members. I must say thank you to Lawrence for being there each day to meet and chat to people that wandered by. Even CAMS did a very nice write up on us on their website, which was great to read. The Australian F1 Grand Prix is one of the best F1 events to go to anywhere, there is so much to see both on track and around the precinct, we are very fortunate to be able to show our cars off to people from all over the world, that come down to enjoy the GP.
We finished the month down at Haunted Hills, where we had a great turnout considering the weather. It was a drizzly, wet and at times windy day down in Gippsland for Round 2 of the Traction Tyres/Yokohama Drivers Championship. Seems it doesn’t matter when we go down there it rains! Regardless, everyone had a great day and lots of laps were had on four different layouts of the track. Keep an eye out, later in the year we have been invited to enter an inter-club championship at Haunted Hills, so when entries come out, I will let you know and we will put a DCM Team together to enter if we have the interest.
It is amazing to think, only a year ago we were jumping through hoops, crossing ts and dotting is on everything we needed to do to form a new Club. It was a huge job, getting approvals from BMW in Germany, from Clubs Australia and all the other Clubs here, but well worth it. When we look back on the last 12 months, what we have done as a Club, the events we have run (over 50 of them!), people we have met, it makes me very proud to see we did the right thing in forming a new Club. We are now at 360 members and on the verge of being the third largest BMW Club in Australia, an amazing achievement in only one year!
Thank you all for supporting us and coming on board and helping to make this the best BMW Club. I am very much looking forward to our Birthday Dinner in a couple of weeks. I hope lots of you will be there to help us celebrate!
Then it’s on to our second year and more of all the things you love. Check the calendar for all the upcoming events, including the BMW Clubs Australia Nationals over Easter.
Looking forward to seeing you at an event soon.
Graeme Bell | President
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne Inc.
P.O. Box 81, TYABB, VICTORIA. 3913
Incorporated in Victoria #A0102695G
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne Inc is a member of:BMW Clubs Australia and the BMW Clubs International Council
CAMS Affiliated Motorsport Club
