It is my pleasure to present the Presidents report for the Volkswagen Owners Club for the year ended 30th June 2020.
The year has been a bit of a mixed bag, with the Covid-19 Pandemic putting paid to a lot of activities throughout the country, including the VW Nationals in Kapiti and the 70th Kombi run around the South Island. Hopefully these events will be able to take place next year. The lockdown did however allow some of our members to spend some extra time working on their vehicles so every cloud has a silver lining as they say !
Club membership has remained steady this year, with 129 paid up members at the end of June, compared to 126 last year. Approximately 20 members did not renew their membership at the start of the year but these were replaced by new members joining throughout the year. The clubs Facebook group continues to be popular with new requests to join on a near daily basis. The page currently has 645 members. Unfortunately we don’t get to see tooooo many of them at our events / outings !
Our monthly club meetings are held at Qualitat European and we thank them for the continued use of their premises, and also thank Vagn Dyson for his time and opening up the workshops for us to have a look at what they are working on. Turnouts at club meetings vary from as few as 7 on AGM night (! ) up to 20 on other nights. Not sure what we can do to attract more to come along. On a couple of occasions we have had our monthly meetings at a Burgerfuel outlet and these meetings also proved quite popular, especially in the summer months !
Our major event for the year, the Spring Jamboree, was again held at the Vellenoweth Green in St. Heliers and was quite well attended, by both the air-cooled and water-cooled fraternity ! Unfortunately the weather forecast was for a dismal day so that probably put a few people off and accounted for a lower turnout than in some previous years ! As is often the case, it turned out nice and sunny in the morning and the rain held off until after the prize-giving had been completed. This event is highly regarded in Auckland VW circles and is one way of fostering the Volkswagen marque, which then helps us get support from the VW importers ( use of the EMD BBQ for example ).
We have had several events throughout the year that made use of the monthly Caffeine & Classics meetings in both Takapuna and Hampton Downs as starting points followed by a run around the countryside for a lunch etc. One that was very popular was the one that started at the Papakura Autobahn, went down to Hampton Downs for the Caffeine & Classics and then carried on to Pukekohe where we visited Simon Tippins workshop, Creative Metalworks, for a BBQ and look-see. Another was the run from Takapuna up to the Cheese Factory Café in Puhoi on the 21st June to celebrate the 25th year of the Worldwide VW Beetle Day event.
In mid January we again took part in the Kumeu Hot Rod show weekend, having our own site, with about 15 members vehicles on display. Thank you to all members who brought their vehicles and thank you to Ben Doughney for helping with the site setup.
Other VW events that club members enjoyed / took part in over the last 12 months include the Bulli camp at Raetihi in November, Handle the Mandel weekend in the Coromandel also in November, and the Run to the Sun in Tauranga in February.
A club is always appreciative of any sponsorship/support that it receives and therefore I would also like to thank Frank Pronk of Euro Auto Services for their continued support in hosting our website and EMD for the use of their BBQ when available. I have already mentioned and thanked Qualitat European for their support, which also includes a discount on parts for club members.
Finally I would like to thank committee members who have helped in organising, setting up and running events, without you nothing would happen. Special mention and THANK YOU to Terry Sawyer for the work he does for the club as Secretary/Treasurer but also for such things as club photographer and helping with organising events etc. Most members probably don’t realise how much work you do Terry but it is a lot and is appreciated.
Knut Erbs
President – Volkswagen Owners Club ( Auckland )