On Thursday, February 13th at 6:00 pm, the BMW Car Club of America New Mexico Chapter held a Tech Session and its Annual Membership Meeting with election of officers and Board of Directors. The session was held at Sandia BMW in Albuquerque and began with the Annual Membership Meeting.
In his President’s report, Jon van Arsdel went over some of the issues facing the BMW CCA including the increasing cost of producing the Roundel and the decrease in the allocation to the chapters. He noted that since we do not put on expensive events like autocross or track sessions, we should be fine with only minor modifications to existing practices. He also noted that the BMW CCA will produce the new BimmerLife magazine twice a year in several regional editions to build awareness of local events and gatherings. The new biannual magazine, the first of which should be arriving in your mailbox soon, will mean we are no longer required to produce a quarterly newsletter. Our goal this coming year is to focus our New Mexico outreach efforts instead via email, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms that are part of your daily life.
Jon began the process of NM BMW CCA Board of Directors elections by announcing he would be stepping down as Chapter President and requested volunteers for the position. Phil Undercuffler thanked Jon for his service and stepped forward to lead our organization into the new year. He was then unanimously elected President. Daniel Flegel was elected Vice President and Dan Jones was re-elected as Treasurer. The Secretary remained vacant. Jason Collin, Jim Levandoski, Shiv Patel, Jon van Arsdel and Richard Yoshimura were unanimously elected as Members at Large.
The Tech Session with Sandia BMW Service Director Chad Fiebiger and Shop Foreman Drew Wolfe began with a presentation on technology and BMW’s newest models. Chad.had an impressive selection of BMWs for us to check out and even sit in. The brand new 228i Grand Coupe had impressive front seats. We got the opportunity to intensely examine the underpinnings of the formidable M2 Competition from the bottom side up. Then there was the X7 if you like your BMWs max sized! Of course, we can’t forget the beautiful M8 Convertible, but any reports that our new President was seen and overheard making vroom-vroom sounds while seated behind the wheel are purely fictional, please pay no attention to such folderol.
Photos by Jason Collin