By Eric Zagrocki, Allegheny Chapter
What an amazing weekend in Schenley Park! As one of the organizers of the event, the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix weekend always goes by in a whirlwind for me. The responsibilities that flow from hosting a party for 400 people mean that I rarely get to watch the races; I only look at a handful of show cars, and my discussions with our guests are often limited to a minute or two. Since it is impossible to do justice to all that occurs at our annual gathering, I thought I would simply share some of the thoughts and the images that I will carry forward from this year’s event.
The week was full of pleasant surprises such as receiving an email late Tuesday night from Klaus Schnitzer indicating that he would be in town photographing the PVGP and offering to give a special presentation recalling Alpina’s 50th Anniversary at our welcome dinner. His photo essay was spectacular!
I missed our informal gathering at the Hofbrauhaus due to work commitments but was happy to hear that everyone had a great time. Although the evening was not intended to be a highly organized event, the volunteers from our chapter somehow managed to find seating so that over 50 people could sit together for dinner without a reservation. I understand we managed to pull that off by getting several folks to move their seats with offers of free beer! (Guys, that was not in the budget!)
8:59 am Friday Morning—Kudos go out for the incredible effort and organization displayed by our tour master, Glen Beattie. Everyone had great time on the tour to Bella Cucina, DeBence Music, and Wendell August Forge. Glen’s attention to detail is best displayed by his parting words to me on Friday morning: “Shut up and give me the money for the lunch bill. It’s 8:59 and we have to leave in one minute. We have a full day and I am not going to be late before we start!” The engineers at BMW would be proud!
In addition to the success of our silent auction, my memories of our welcome dinner are ingrained with the image of Satch Carlson showing up in a white three-piece suit while the rest of us were dressed in khakis and polo shirts. Satch later pulled out a spatula, a screwdriver, and a turkey baster from the suit while teaching us all how to properly open a bottle of champagne. Thanks Satch for spending your time with us! I think I saw a chuckle when I gave Satch our 2013 shirt with a Z8 on the back rather than our 2015 shirt. I know that volunteers Erin and Greg Calvimontes did a great job because I received positive comments from my own party A—and my most trusted critic—who told me afterward how much she enjoyed the dinner and presentations.
After an early week forecast that included a 60% chance of rain, we got a typically hot, humid but totally lovely Pittsburgh summer day for the big show on Saturday. In fact, not a drop of rain fell on the event all weekend in stark contrast to last year when we battled continuous monsoon-like rains. Nevertheless, Nick Plakas, was taking no chances and made the M umbrella one of our most successful silent auction items!
This year, we had record attendance! We had about 250 cars pre-registered. Thanks to the sunny skies, we had lots of walk up attendance and we counted over 305 cars in the park. This beat our old attendance mark by at least 40 cars! Thanks to the efforts of our “noodle brigade” lead by Michael Meehan, Jim Williams and Chris Williams, we found space on our limited show field for all 305 cars.
At lunchtime, our lunch line wrapped its way outside our tent. I was worried about the length of the line until Nick Griot told me that it was an unexpected bonus to have close to 400 lunch guests walk through their tent! Thanks Griot’s for all of your support!
We were thrilled that Lothar Schuettler chose the PVGP to display his freshly restored 1958 502. What a treat! Lothar also brought one of only a handful of 2002 Cabriolets in the country. Both are incredible cars; however, the image that I will remember from the event is the police motorcycle, the mannequin dressed in green, and the wonderful smile on Lothar’s face as he turned on the lights and siren. The BMW CCA is blessed to have special folks like Lothar who not only restore BMW’s history but also generously share that history with the rest of us.
Our car corral featured everything from the freshly restored 502, Mike McClosky’s 1957 Isetta, Art Wegweiser’s 1972 3.0 CSi with over 400,000 miles it, a CSL tribute car, a new i8, new Alpinas, and almost every variety of M car ever made, but it’s not just the historic cars that filled our corral. Chapter member, Greg Farrell, stopped me to express his excitement at seeing his car’s twin, owned by Lindsay Draime of Michigan, a 535xi Touring with a 6-speed manual transmission. The corral also featured plenty of other daily drivers.
Thanks to the support of Andreas Kiss and BMW Classic, the E28 M5 from the BMW museum was in attendance. I was thrilled when Andreas handed me the keys to let Mario Andrade and his son, Alex, from Canada, closely examine the car. I was even more excited to actually have the chance to drive the car from the show field to its overnight home in the secure club house parking lot. Although the car is not perfect, with only 14,000 miles, this has to be one of the most original E28 M5’s in existence. Andreas will be happy to know that the A/C lines and other bits are still in place on the NA car. In just 3/10ths of a mile, however, it was easy to tell that the shifter bushings are tighter, the seat is more supportive, and the engine jumps off idle just a bit quicker than my own 134,000 mile example.
Through the teamwork displayed by the Stig of the PVGP, Mike Renner, our “shuttle driver” and Chapter President, George Snyder, his wife and our newsletter editor, Johna, charity laps were provided to our guests all weekend. Everyone who got out of Mike’s Performance Center M3 was grinning ear to ear and we are very happy to announce that we may have finally broken through the $5,000 barrier with regard to funds raised from Mike’s efforts for the PVGP charities, the Allegheny Valley School and the Autism Society of Pittsburgh. Mike and I have shared the goal of raising $5,000 for a few years now. We congratulate Emilio Veneziano who won the chance to learn how to “drive like Mike” at the Two-Day M Performance School. Emilo was stunned when his name was announced. Emilo—have fun at school but you owe us a future newsletter article!
They say that 2002 owners are a special group. I can confirm that is true because after the day in Schenley Park, our guests enjoyed pizza, beer and more camaraderie at Artifacts, thanks to the generosity of Mike Terrell and his wife.
Of course, I appreciate the many things the BMW CCA Foundation does for us that are off the radar screen. Michael, Bill, Tim and Jaynee supported us all weekend with the little things that make our show special. I also have to thank the good folks at Liberty Mutual, and especially our new local representative, Erin Parker. Erin made sure that I didn’t make a wrong turn all weekend. If you have insurance needs, we owe it Erin to ask for assistance.
Finally, and most importantly, I will remember the incredible efforts of our volunteers. The PVGP is unique in that it is a world class automotive event that has raised close to $4,000,000 for charity. It includes two weekends of racing, several car shows and many, many ancillary events every year. As part of the PVGP, the Allegheny Chapter hosts a Club Race, a tour, a dinner, other receptions and one of the largest BMW car shows on the east coast. The PVGP is put on by 1,200 volunteers. Those volunteers include close to 40 Allegheny Chapter members who gave their time to make this year’s annual gathering at the PVGP such a huge success:
Glen Beattie, Kent Beaver, Rich Becker, Alex Bowman, Greg, Calvimontes, Erin Calvimontes, Ashley Calvimontes, John Carson, Christine Carson, Allen Christian, David Cutherall, Eric Docherty, Norm Franke, Sophie Jeong, Mark Krchmar, Darlene Lambert, Rick Lambert, Marianne Meehan, Michael Meehan, Tiffany Nolan, Bill Pelger, Suzanne Pelger, Bill Permar, Chuck Rice, George Snyder, Johna Snyder, Pete Stipanovich, Kathleen Stipanovich, Dee Sutton, Brett Sutton, Tim Swisher, Mike Terrell, Bob Weir, Maxine Weir, David Yeager, Denise Yeager, Chris Williams and Jim Williams. To one and all, including anyone I may have inadvertently missed—THANK YOU!
When the current group of organizers started to coordinate the event several years ago, our goal was simple. For anyone who was not in attendance but later heard about it, we wanted those folks to say “I missed quite a show, I will have to attend next year.” I hope we met that goal again this year and I hope you will put our 2016 Annual Gathering on your calendar!—Eric Zagrocki, Allegheny Chapter
