Cruizin’Cruizin’ NewzNewz The Official Magazine of the Z Series Car Club of America SPRING 2019 President’s Message! - Eric Peck www.zscca.org Things are happening at ZSCCA, so I thought I’d use my space to do a deep ZSCCA Board of Directors & Staff dive on them. Change can be both scary and exciting. It’s also necessary, even for us Eric Peck • President at ZSCCA. Keeping everything exactly the Huntersville, NC [email protected] same year after year is a recipe for slow 309-214-2753 decline. Even BMW gives us a new Z de- Jon Moorhead • Vice President sign every few years. So, let me tell you Salida, CO about what’s going on. [email protected] 719-221-1891 Change #1 - Many of you have seen our Robert Van Zandt • Secretary new website at ZSCCA.org. Early last bership system debuted. The process has Yorktown, VA spring, with the debut of the new G29 Z4 admittedly been a bit bumpy so I want [email protected] looming, we knew we had to update our you all to know why we did it this way. Chuck Krblich • Treasurer online presence. We felt it important to The membership database from the old Fort Lauderdale, FL put our best foot forward as BMW and website was not accurate. So, rather than [email protected] migrate all of it over to the new site, we 954.295.0277 many new Z owners would begin to look at us. Our old website was functional and opted to start from scratch. This is why Nico Valentijn • Membership Liaison comfortable, but it had a very dated look we’ve asked everyone to login with fresh Bristol, IN [email protected] and some content was difficult to manage. credentials. If you haven’t gone through We were also having issues with some that process, you probably aren’t read- Chris Wootten • Strategic of the automated functions, like renewal ing this right now. Please- ask your fellow Relationships Ambassador reminder emails. Besides that, a lot has member-friends to get connected. Easton, MD changed on the digital landscape, and we Reenie Paley Marshall • Special were significantly behind the times. What’s next? By the time you read this, Projects Manager ZFEST.com will be gone. We will be shar- Midlothian, VA Although we had been discussing it for ing all ZFEST information and processing [email protected] some time, we restarted the process of registration via ZSCCA.org. No more sep- Brian Roces • Technology & finding affordable options for develop- arate website logins. We have leaned heav- Social Media Director ing a new site. Let me tell you, we had a ily on Facebook for distribution of club and New York, NY huge wish list of what we wanted from a event information. We are not giving up on [email protected] 202.867.5309 new website. The options of just paying a social media. In fact, we aren’t using that to company to produce a site, or buy into a its full potential either. However, we would Mark Bigelow • Member-at-Large like to leverage the website more for shar- Petersburg, PA packaged solution were evaluated. There [email protected] are some amazing options out there to be ing local group information and even regis- sure, but most are cost-prohibitive for an tering for local and regional events online. Brian Bednar - Area Rep Manager Cleveland, OH organization of our size. [email protected] Change #2 - Your ZSCCA Board of Direc- 216.287.5563 We opted to begin work internally on a tors. It’s healthy for an organization to ro- Andy Hartwell • Editor new site using WordPress as our develop- tate leadership duties and bring fresh faces Selden, NY ment platform. WordPress powers literally and ideas to the table. I’m happy to an- [email protected] millions of websites, so we are not coding nounce these recent board appointments: Ric Genthe • Creative/Production Director a one-of-a-kind custom site that only a few -Brian Bednar has been appointed to the Madison, WI people are able to manage. The availability position of Area Rep Manager. Brian will [email protected] of “plug-in” applications means we can eas- be responsible for supporting our Area 608.575.9285 ily add capability with tech support readily Reps and recruiting new reps. Brian’s’ Ainsley Jacobs • Web Master available. This also allows us to accept pay- background in sales will help us continue Alpharetta, GA ments directly instead of using PayPal. to grow. He takes over from Jay Parnes, 267.738.2134 who has served in the position for the last Wayne & Amy Lester • Founders Emeritus As luck would have it, a talented web pro- 3 years. Nebo, NC [email protected] grammer came into our midst at just the right time to help. Ainsley Jacobs bought • Ainsley Jacobs has been appointed to a Z4M Roadster and was very excited the position of Web Manager. Ainsley has ZFEST, ZSCCA and their graphic representations are about finding our community. Ainsley does been instrumental in the rollout of our registered trademarks of the Z Series Car Club of America. business as a web programmer focused new website, and will continue the effort Reproduction of them requires written approval. on Motorsports clients, so she fits right in of expanding our content and digital pres- here. She happily joined our tech team and ence. She takes over from Robin Blair, who began helping us immediately. was long serving in this capacity. Many of you have interacted with Ainsley • Andy Hartwell has been appointed to (and Brian) via email since the new mem- the position of Cruizin Newz Editor. As you cover photo by Jon Moorhead know, Andy is a powerhouse writer. He back photo, ZFEST 2018, by Meri Johnston continued on page 8 new editor! 1 Andrew Hartwell from the Editor! - Andy Hartwell Hello everyone, my name is Andy Hartwell and I want to wel- professional level procrastinator. I could elaborate but, maybe later. come you to the spring 2019 issue of Cruizin’ Newz, my first issue serving (in transition with Meri Johnston) as your new Editor. The ‘real job’, the one that paid the bills, was with the Estee Lauder Companies. In 2012, at the end of 38 years, I retired from the I am stepping into some big shoes, replacing Meri. Before I tell you position of Director of Human Resources. anything about me, I want to take a minute to thank Meri for her dedication and energy to the job as Editor. She delivered so many My wife, Shirley and I have been married since May 20, 1972, and quality issues of this magazine to all of us in this amazing club. She we are lifelong Long Islanders (NY). We have one son, Christo- kept all the contributors on track each month, and freely solic- pher, born in 1973. Chris, his wife, Kristen, and our only grandchild, ited ideas and potential stories and articles from everyone. Her Magnus Tadeusz Hartwell, live in Bournemouth, England. Chris is a leadership was the driver for what has made CN the wonderful full professor at two colleges, one in England (undergrad students) magazine it has become. and one in Poland (graduate students). Magnus, at age 3.5, seems to have inherited the brains that both his parents and my wife Meri didn’t work alone, of course. People like Eric Peck and Ric were blessed with. No help from grandpa, that’s for sure! Genthe and Chris Wooten, and Ed McKernan and so many other contributors, all played key roles. Thankfully, we all had Meri at the We own a 1998 1.9 Atlanta Blue roadster. We bought it on April masthead, steering us all in one direction. My complete thanks go 15, 2003 and I smiled all the way home from the dealer’s that day! to Meri and the whole CN team for everything they have done Here we are 16 years later and that car still makes me smile. We and we all wish her the best in life to come. brought her into the family when she was just 40,000 miles young. Today, our car – Z LUVBUG – is approaching nearly 137,000 By the way, did you know everyone on the CN team is a volun- miles. We keep her in the garage every night and take her out teer? Everyone. More on that in a minute. whenever the weather cooperates. That means those of us living in the northeast perhaps appreciate spring’s arrival a tad more OK, so who am I? Some of you know me from the one on one in- than folks further south of us. terviews we did together for the ‘’Meet Z Members” column here in CN. Aside from that, and despite what you might have heard, Did I mention I love driving that car? It’s not the fastest; I some- I’m really just an old guy who used to cover sports car racing times wish I had another 50 horsepower, but it is just so much fun for websites and magazines, as a photographer and journalist. For to be behind the wheel, tooling around back roads. many years I wrote a column called ‘Through The Esses”, where I interviewed a good number of the people involved in the sport. I Enough about me, let’s talk about this club and this magazine. As I also did PR related work for a few teams and I am a professional noted earlier, all of the people who make CN happen are volun- member of the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters teers.