As most of you are aware, we’ve just returned from a weekend in Mull – 16 members and 8 cars staying on the picturesque harbourfront of Tobermory made for a weekend to remember! Many thanks to Robert Kidd for ensuring that we did not see a single cloud for the duration of our stay!
During the weekend, Patrick and Matt took the opportunity to chat with the participants and take the pulse of that cross-section of the membership community. While most of the feedback was positive, there were a couple of issues that we realise need addressing. And this letter hopefully starts to address one of those!
Communication. Historically we’ve communicated only major events and issues, with minor things spreading through word of mouth. And in this day and age, it need not be so. So after canvassing opinion, we have set up a club blog. All members will have read/write access (although you will need to send us your email addresses in order that we authorise you) and all others will have read access. Whilst this blog is for members to communicate between themselves and for us to add minor news contributions and answer questions, we’d like to point out that it should not be a forum for criticism. If any member does have a particular grievance about the club or a car, please talk to Matt directly.
Other than that we’re happy for this blog to grow organically and reflect the needs and wishes of the members – post on any topic you wish that you think other members would find interesting, and feel free to add pics and videos of you having fun in club cars! Log on now to see some of the pics of the trip to Mull!
You may have noticed getting in touch with us has been a little harder over the last couple of months – as some of you know Derek has been off for some time having his bodywork fixed, and is now recuperating in Australia. He’s due back in work at the start of June, but in the meantime Matt is minding the fort all by himself. If you can’t get through on the landline do try Matt’s mobile (0771 204 5390). In Derek’s absence our ex-Ecurie Ecosse mechanic Jimmy is doing his best to keep the cars on the road. During this time, member Myke Grantham has kindly offered to help out around the club – any ideas as to what you think he could do to improve things?
The second issue raised in Mull was relating to lack of car related availability due to mechanical issues, which was coincidentally something that we at CCC had also been considering. Over the last couple of years the club has theoretically had around 20 cars at its disposal, but due to mechanical failures and delays in ordering parts only 10 – 15 of these were available at any given time. We understand that it is frustrating for members who may have joined to experience particular cars, only to find that the nature of these older exotic (and Italian) cars leaves them liable to be out of commission for long periods of time. For example, since its accident last year, the club Maserati 3200GT was sent to the coachbuilders to be rebuilt, and from there to the only Maserati specialists north of Leeds to be re-commissioned. 6 months later it is still there as the specialists are having difficulty diagnosing a specific electrical problem which leaves the car un-drivable.
Whilst we are doing all we can to get this and other cars back on the road, in many instances the timing is out of our hands. With this in mind we are seriously considering a large-scale uprating of the fleet. The idea is to have more desirable and more reliable cars that members would be keen to experience and that would be available to members for a greater proportion of time. We have a good idea of the sort of cars that would achieve this, but to get to our target fleet quickly we would need an injection of new funds.
As most of you are aware, we are in the midst of an unprecedented credit shortfall and combined with sky-high fuel prices we feel that there will be a real opportunity to add perfect uprated club cars in the next 6 months at bargain prices. As mentioned above we would need a rapid injection of funds to achieve this – of the many ways of getting this, members may be interested to invest in a asset-backed debenture scheme. This is the way that many other car clubs are run, and one we are seriously considering. As the club is primarily about the members, your thoughts on this are very important to us – why not use the blog to chat about it?
Let us know!
Matt, Patrick & Graham
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