I hope all of our members enjoyed a great Holiday season. I wanted to start the year with a brief update on where we are as a BMW CCA Chapter for 2020. 

In November BMW CCA held a meeting of all the Chapter Presidents and Treasures in Dallas Texas. At this meeting, many items for the future of the club as a whole were discussed that will have a profound effect on Chapter operations for the coming years. 

The most monumental change will be the significant loss of chapter revenue paid by National to the chapters. We will lose about 45% of our income from National over last year’s amount. National justifies this by not requiring the chapters to issue quarterly newsletters to our members. Please believe me when I tell you that our newsletters did not cost us anywhere near 45% of our income from National. Instead, you will be receiving twice a year a new regional magazine with content solely supplied by the regional chapters. The name will be Bimmerlife!  

This was done because the club BMW CCA has a net loss of over $800,000 in the last year. The largest part of that loss was caused by the club magazine Roundel. Like many other magazines add revenue for the Roundel has plummeted. National has decided to try to offset that loss partly by way of reducing the monthly stipends to the chapters. As a result, your board has been forced to consider how we move forward in the best interest of our members and to give you our members the best experience we can for 2020. Number one on that list starting an Auto Cross program. Presently we are working with the venue and the Porsche club to “piggyback” on their successful events. This is only until we decide if this is a viable option for our members. If we do decide to move forward as Sunshine Bimmers Auto Cross we will have to incur the expense of purchasing our own timing equipment and computer to run our events.  Next, we decided to push the 2019 Holiday Party to January 2020.

You should have seen the posting on our Sunshine Bimmers Facebook page and Websites with details. You will be receiving an email invitation shortly. We decide to do this for two reasons. We wanted to wait until after the November meeting to be aware of just how much of our monthly revenue we were going to lose. (we never even considered that it would be that high) The second reason was that this year there was a very short window to host a party because there were only three weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

That said the board and I will work hard to make 2020 a banner year for our members. I would like to hear from you our members with suggestions on what you would like. You can email me at robertziegler@msn.com with your ideas. I know I speak for your entire Sunshine Board in Wishing you all the best for 2020! Bob Ziegler, Sunshine Bimmers President 

Remember it is not about the cars it is about the people

Dear Members:

In an effort to ensure that our organization is adhering to the requirements as set forth by BMW CCA, our current Board members will be calling some of our membership over the next week regarding their currently selected preference for obtaining the Sunshine Bimmers newsletter. Our goal is to reach 100% paperless distribution within the next year.

If you aren’t certain of your current newsletter preference, please log-in on the BMWCCA.org site: https://www.bmwcca.org/login
1) Select “my membership”
2) Email Preferences & Demographics
3) select “Receive Chapter Newsletter via” Email

It might be a good time to update some of your other information as well.  In advance, thank you for your help to get us paperless!

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On behalf of all of us at BMW Car Club of America Sunshine Bimmers Chapter, Inc. We would like to wish you and your families a safe and happy New Year!

We enjoyed so many fun activities in 2017 and closed out the year with our Christmas Party at Fields BMW in Winter Park, where a grand time was had by all and then our Backyard Movie, Thanks to Robin (which was moved inside due to the cold).

We are looking forward to another great year of exciting activities for our area BMW enthusiasts.

On October 29^th Sunshine Bimmers held their annual car show at Fields BMW in Winter Park. The day started off with windy with misty rain and cool temperatures. It did not look like an ideal day to hold a car show! Eventually, the weather gods smiled on us and the sun came out.

As this was our first car show as a BMW CCA Chapter in a while and we were unsure as to what the turnout might be, especially because of the weather. We were hopeful that 25 to 30 cars would attend.

We were completely blown away when over 55 cars showed up and registered for the event, and at least another 10 were present but were too late to register.

This was a People’s Choice car show. . . . No judging. This makes the event more of a “Gathering of the BMW Faithful” than an actual car show.

The cars were divided into 5 classes, Classic, Vintage, All other or late model and M Class. Ballots were handed out to all attendees and spectators to vote for their favorite cars.

It was decided that since Fields was hosting the event they would make the choice for “Best in Show”.

Here are the results:

Winner Classic: Brandon Pierce for his 1970 2002.

Winner Vintage Class: M. Sosa for his E46 3 series.

Winner Late Model: Kayla Diaz for her 2014 435i

Winner M Class: Jamie Soto for his 2003 M3

Finally, the Best in Show pick from Fields BMW was an original 1975 2002 Turbo owned by Curtis Angle.

Just one brief note:

We all love BMW’s! There was one car at the event which I have seen on a number of occasions. Most people do not even give it a second glance. It is a 1980 E21 320i which is often overlooked because it followed the beloved 2002 or the car that came after it the cult favorite E30. BUT this is an amazing car. This car has OVER 650,000 miles on it and is owned by Joe Neris. I decided to give Joe a winning ribbon just because! The car is in wonderful original shape for a 1980 car with less than 100,000 miles on it. The car is remarkable I hope Joe hits the million mile mark!

I would like to thank Fields BMW of Winter Park for their support in making this event happen. I would also like to thank all the Sunshine Bimmers members who came out to help make this show work. Thanks to Nick Katona, Don Wright, Mark and Amy Rutenberg and especially Tom Betlow who was my “go to guy” in dealing with Fields.

Sunshine Bimmers has already started working on the 2018 event which will be bigger and better!

Happy Holidays to all.

Bob Ziegler Club Sec.

Like many Americans who have a chance to live aboard, Joseph and his wife Katherine came in contact with new and interesting experiences. In the early 1980s, they were newlyweds living in Germany, discovering European traveling, culture, food, and of course BMWs. There, Joseph purchased his first BMW, an E12 525, it was a used vehicle already a few years old.

They put a lot of miles (kilometers) on the 525 as they traveled extensively on the autobahns and back roads of Germany and the surrounding countries. Today, Joseph owns an E88 2011 128i convertible with a manual transmission, an F30 2013 328i, and yes, a 2014 BMW bicycle.

Joseph’s track experiences have been at the BMW Performance Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina for the 1-day M School and the more advanced 2-day M School. In addition, he has been a member of the chapter since 2011, his hobbies include traveling, reading, fitness, and classical music. Joseph works in software development and his personal motto is “Take nothing for granted”. Below is a photo of Joseph and his lovely bride Katherine.