Thirty Years Ago

Discussion at the Club meeting centered on attracting new members; 25 paid members were on the membership roll at that time.  Planning was underway to hold the 5^th Annual Austin Healey West Coast Meet at the Inn at the Seventh Mountain, near Bend.

Healey Northwest featured a long article entitled, A Guide to Originality.  I wonder how those guidelines match up to today’s concours standards?

Twenty Years Ago

Planning for another West Coast Meet, to be hosted by the AHCO was underway.  This time, the event would be held at the Rippling River Resort, at Welches.  In the pages of Healey Northwest, Richard Mayor described his season’s adventures vintage racing in a big Healey.  Just think how much more he knows now!

If you Santa didn’t bring you what you wanted, there was a completely rebuilt BT7 tri-carb advertised in Healey Northwest for $13,500.

Ten Years Ago

Club members met in Eugene for visits to a custom upholstery shop and Bob Macherione’s Sports Car Shop, followed by the West Bros. Barbeque for the meeting and dinner.  A couple folks even showed up in their Healeys owing to unusually nice weather.

I hope you all have survived the holidays and the beastly weather we’ve been experiencing recently here in the Willamette Valley.  I was fortunate enough to escape the worst of Oregon’s weather during Christmas week.  Dawn and I spent the week in Arizona with members of her family.  We had rain and relatively cold weather down there, but nearly as bad as it was back at home.  Even during the nicer weather we had, I failed to spot a single Arizona Healey out and about.

After 32 years of printing a Club newsletter every month, we’re finally fully embarked on using the electronic Healey Northwest, here, as our primary means of communication.  We’ve been experimenting with it for several months now and it seems as if it has been successful.  As always, your contributions to the site and our communications among Club members, whether it’s the written word, photographs, video, or something else, is always appreciated.  Keep it coming.

2009 promises to be a busy year for the Club.  Austin Healey is the featured marque for this year’s Portland All British Field Meet (the 33^rd annual event, if you’re counting), over Labor Day weekend.  We’ll start planning our “Town Square” display featuring some aspect of the marque this month.  If you have some ideas on what that display could feature or you’d like to help in its organization and installation, please contact Doug Auburg or I.

We’ll also host the Northwest Meet a couple weeks later on September17 – 19.  We’ve selected the Red Lion Hotel at McMinnville as the site for the Meet.  George and Jaci Koeber will provide us with an update on this event at the January meeting.

Finally, we’ll soon select the site and start the planning for the 2010 Healey Rendezvous (or West Coast Meet for you old timers).  We’ll have presentations from the two finalist sites, Eugene and Seaside, at our meeting next Saturday.  We’ll also be posting a side-by-side comparison of information for the two locations on the Club web site soon, so those of you who can’t attend the meeting can review some information on the sites prior to a membership vote on the matter.  We’ll send ballots to all Club members, so you may help choose where to hold the event.  No matter which location we choose, we’re sure to need some help from Club members to help get all of the activities, awards, and other details that goes with a Rendezvous in order before summer 2010.

With all of that, I expect we might even find some time to go for a drive or two once the weather dries out and warms up.  Please join us for what should be a fun year ahead.