Phil's 2012 BKCC Newsletter.

['The Gaffer']

Hello Bristol Kit Car Club Members

This 2012 newsletter contains praise, a little disappointment, and a home truth.. 

It's not long now before the 2012 kit car season gets underway, so with this in mind I would like to remind you that we have 14 events in the calendar for this year already - Anything from a quiet Classic Car Show on a country pub green to a full on Drag Racing day at Shakespeare Raceway, and of course, the all important Stoneleigh Kit Car Show where we have a stand booked as usual, plus a few Track Days to boot and much, much, more to come.

2012 is going to be a very important year in the clubs history and future. The club itself has done what it was designed to do, and that was to find like minded kit car enthusiasts local to me and share experiences with them. It has certainly done that and over the last few years I have met some great new friends as a result - so thank you for that. That said, it is important that we remain active as a club in 2012, so it would be nice to see a few old faces popping back onto the forum to say hello and more people coming forward prepared to suggest and organise a few more events (Thanks to those who have tried already but I am a little disappointed that others have not). With the best will in the world, I have only limited time these days what with running a business etc so can only donate time to stuff that returns time investment. I sincerely hope the BKCC does that during this coming year.

The club relies on all types of events to keep interest, the BKCC is not just a track day club as some have suggested, it is designed to be a social hub where all ideas are welcome - Remember, without input there is no output. So if you have an idea for the club? Post it on the forum.. Don't just sit back and wait to be spoon fed.

The club's future depends on it this year - USE IT OR LOSE IT - Home truth.. Seriously.

Over the BKCC years, cars (including mine) and members have come and gone, builds have been started and abandoned, health issues have interfered with our hobbies, not to mention money being tighter than ever before, but still new builders and owners continue to join the BKCC and the hard core of members still remain.

The kit car scene is very transient compared to Marque specific clubs where member participation tends to follow a more conservative line compared to a kit car club member's initial surge of posts (Especially during the first stages of a build) followed in most cases with these members going AWOL never to be seen again - Sad, and I wonder why.
I suggest we all welcome and support new members and make them feel at home - I believe we are one of the least cliquey car clubs I know of, I'd like to think new members do as well.

The BKCC forum is a great revelation; There are 3 years worth of questions and answers, suggestions and banter, p*ss taking and camaraderie captured on the forum for all the world to see and also some great moments in club history captured in pictures. No one should be afraid to post on the forum, even if they think what they have to say is boring, it's not. People like myself come here to be entertained, but if there's nothing to see they will gradually go elsewhere. Forum posting is just as important as outside events, so come on folks, let's see those keyboards tapping!!

We have 324 members and we all know who the active ones are, so even if another 50 of dormant ones became more involved we would have a club to be reckoned with. Those that just join to get insurance discount will be frowned upon and soon a post count feature will come into place to stop these liggers stealing our resources.

I thank those that have become 'Club Supporters' Your funds have been very useful in providing the club with Public Liability Insurance etc which for the record has just been renewed again. 

The website has lots of potential too. I have worked hard with SEO to be recognised in Google search pages. We get over 500,000 hits per month with over 7000 of those being unique visitors looking at our site. There are nearly 190,000 forum posts to date that visitors trawl through. I receive many emails from people commenting on how much they have enjoyed the site and many who would like to advertise on the the site too, just goes to show we are quite a popular little club. Here's a little experiment for you to try..
Open up Google and type in 'Kit Car Club'. Not bad eh? Try 'BKCC' Not a bad result against the Blackrock Kelso Capital Corp. (NASDAQ)‎ In short, we have a great resource that people can find, join, and share.

Anyway, enough trumpet blowing, we have a great little club and long may it last, but at present the work that goes on behind the scenes keeping the website problem and spammer free takes more effort than reward.
All it takes is for everybody to take a step back, look at what we have, and make a concerted effort to make it take off to the next level, even the 'fence sitters' who have never posted before can share - Come on in, we don't bite. Personally I cant do more than I've done so it's over to you now.. Lets make 2012 a cracking club year and I look forward to seeing many of you during the up and coming season.

As usual I am open to suggestions, if the club is not working for you or you have a complaint just post up, PM or email me in confidence. I am particularly interested in hearing from people who were active for some time and then faded away.

All the best and here's to a great 2012.

Phil.

[probablyleon]

As in the subject... I'm afraid I fit well and truly into the 'fence sitter' category, but would hate for this club to fizzle due to the perceived apathy of myself and others like me.

My car, having had a fairly major engine failure and subsequent fire, has resided for the past 14 months over at AB Performance having all the work done I didn't feel capable of doing myself (most of it in truth). I'm hoping to be taking it to dyno (PDQ) in the next week or two so with luck I'll be much more active this summer. I'm also a Bristol Pegasus member and as such have booked the Castle Combe day in August. I'm keen to do as many other (beginner suitable) trackdays as I can afford so any suggestions would be more than welcome.

Keep up the good work

Leon

[Dixie]

Maybe the AGM will throw up some idea's/issues.

I jokingly call Paintman, Stupot and I the "Somerset" chapter.  Perhaps because the club is so successful and now so big covering a huge geographic area we are always going to struggle in getting more than a handful of people together at any one time, should we consider "regions" and then put someone in charge of each one who can liase with other regions?  Routine events such as the Queen Square is good because it is a set date every month, Stoneleigh is good because the date is set, Weston Super Mare has proven popular because the date was "Pre-booked" by someone else!!.  Every club I can think of has a meet up on a morning, so that a run can be organised or not.  Our continued meeting at a pub early evening does nothing to promote driving our cars.  If that is what people like then great, but it isn't for me.

I bet if you stuck a pin in the middle of Bristol, there would be a 20mile radius where most people live, with less living more than this but I expect we still have up to a 50 mile radius.  So by the very nature of this, only a small core of people will meet up regularly.

I wonder why ACKKC are so successful in organising events etc, yet their web site is no where near as popular as ours? Is this because they are a club with a committee with monthly meetings?  I personally hate committees, chairman,secretary's and treasurers etc, just leave me cold.  Been there, done that, not doing it again.

The Cobra Club I belong to do something every weekend, they have regional reps(Not committees), but they are country wide with 3000 members so are on a differant scale, but the principle is there.

It has been said that we always come "South", that's because little is organised "North".  We tend to go to the coast, but why don't we go to the Arbouritum, Gloucester, Cotswold water park, there are loads of lovely places on or around the M4/M5 interchange, just needs someone to look at a map, stick a pin in and then find a nice route to it, via a pub or cafe.  Cheddar is a simple quick morning out for a breakfast, but rarely do we have anyone turn up or suggest meeting for a chat.  Axebridge is a lovely little place, we never go there.  Clevedon just up the road, nope never do that either?  It just needs someone to arrange something.

We had a fab day last yr going to Westbay and having a picnic etc.  Only 4 of us turned up, we even had a pub lay on Sunday lunch in a private room.  But zero interest.  Is that because it is "South"?

Phil, I don't have a magic formula, but my thoughts are that this is a Forum based club with no Formal nominated Committee or officers with no routine monthly meeting such as other clubs have. Because of this it will always be a successful "Web" based club, but my fear is that it will never be a Kitcar club in the normal sense of the word. That doesn't make it a bad thing, just might not be what you are trying to achieve?

That said, for a "Web" based club to exchange views, learn stuff and have a laugh and occasionally organise an event or two such as trackdays or meetings at pre-organised events, then this club will succeed 100%.

Whatever happens, thanks for all you hard work and I hope we support it so that your efforts are valued and warrented.

Regards Mark

[paintman]

   Thanks for all your hard work you did last year Phil and for all your future work keeping "OUR" club going behind the scenes and organising events.
 
I agree with most of the things that Dixie posted but splitting the clubs into "regions" I think would tend to split the club rather than make it stronger, with splinter groups breaking away and forming their own clique.

There's no way you can please everyone as you said and we all want different things from the club.    Some are only interested in track-days whilst others just want to drive around and meet up for a chat and a laugh ....... both are fine by me but it would be great if now and again we could try the "other thing"...... i.e. try a track day or try a day-out convoying to the coast for fish and chips and a pose. .......never know if we don't try it.

                                                                                             Tony

['The Gaffer']

Thanks Leon, appreciate your post. Keep an eye on the trackday and motorsports section of the forum, hope to see you at one soon and I'm pleased you have jumped off the fence

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Hi Mark and everyone else reading, I realised some time ago that the club had to become 'official' in some sense to enable us to obtain such things as liability insurance, and to pay for such things we had to set up a bank account. During March 2011 the BKCC formal committee was indeed announced and in my opinion has been very successful albeit being deliberately low key.. The committee has held meetings with minutes available on request.


Me 'The Gaffer' Chairman. I am responsible for the day-to-day running of the club, website and forum. I am the contact point if there are any problems. I also oversee and assist in events and tasks carried out by club members and the committee.

KrazyKen. Ken is the BKCC secretary and motor sports / club discounts expert. Ken looks after the admin side of the club and negotiates discounts for us. He also keeps us up to date on track days and motor sports events.

Dave Bence is the club treasurer; he will be looking after the clubs financial affairs as well as distributing 'Club Supporter' membership cards and assisting with event co-ordination when time permits.

The only club void that was not addressed despite many requests was, and still is, is a full time events co-ordinator. I have since suggested that people step up to the plate and plan and run their own events, so far with little success leaving me to organise at least a skeleton number of meets and events myself.
As you say, the content of current meets do not promote driving of cars, but neither is help / impetuous forthcoming in suggesting meets that involve driving. Different meets suit different people it seems, however like you, I'm all for driving.
I am happy to discuss area reps and dividing the club into chapters, but we are not exactly a national club. Anyone care to pipe up on this?

The ACKCC is a well established club with a similar hard core of members, but I wonder what you mean by "successful in organising events" ? Examples for comparison ?

I like your meet suggestions Mark, and I would like to add a Welsh trip over a few days maybe but I think the deciding factor is whether people actually want to drive their cars and be sociable or just simply tinker with oily rags reticently refusing to take their cars more than 5 miles from the garage. Time will tell on that one

Thanks for the input Mark, I'm always happy to talk further with you.

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Tony, thanks, I like your atitude, if you dont try you may never like. I am quite surprised that more kit car owners are not interested in track days, it's what a lot of them are made for.

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Dont get me wrong anybody, we have a very successful club with even a sell out event coming up, and yes it is a very successful website as well but the fact remains that unless everything is used to it's full capacity we may as well move over to Facebook if only a minority continue to make use of whats on offer.

Lets see how 2012 goes and again as usual I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks for the support.

Phil.

[Bulldog Bri]

I to would like to add my thanks to Phil for starting this supurb club, the Monthly meetings do still exist in Queens Sq For Morning Meet and Saltford for an afternoon meeting.

I would also like to think I would be in a position to return to events Co-ordinator for next year once I've got less building work to do here.  I did orginise a couple of drive outs North of Bristol and those also ran very low on numbers or didn't eventually take place through lack of interest, so it sometimes just seems to be luck of the weather on the day or turns out not a good date for some or one of many other excuses.

But as Phil says we have a large membership now and would love to see more input from a lot more people even if they aren't in this area and it's to just to chat about their cars or intrests. Come on guys, get involed....... 

[Dixie]

Hi Phil.

Question:-
The ACKCC is a well established club with a similar hard core of members, but I wonder what you mean by "successful in organising events" ? Examples for comparison ?

Answer:-
All I meant was that ACKKC and others seem to organise a run out most weekends, not just attending the pre-organised larger events. They just seem to have a core of people that regularly get together and drive their cars and not just polish or repair them.  If you read the kitcar mag or their web site, they are often crossing the border to Devon, Cornwall etc, or just a simple run to a local cafe.  They just seem very active?

Regards Mark