The Lyons Roar by David Harrison, VJC President

I am looking forward to the first VJC event of the season, the garage warming at the Bruce and Marian Murff residence in Mechanicsville on Saturday Feb 21. Please put this on your calendar and turn up in your Jaguar as we need to discuss important club issues. Bruce Murff is our esteemed membership chair, and has analysed our geographic distribution of membership as part of a somewhat overdue review of club status and direction, for which I feel the responsibility. I've summarized Bruce's analysis of membership.

Central VA (basically greater Richmond area ie GR)	36 %
Eastern Va ( Norfolk, VA Beach, Williamsburg ie NVW)	32 %
Western VA (Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Blacksburg)	18%
Northern VA (Fredericksburg, Warrenton)	10 %
Southern VA ( Farmville, etc)	4 %

This seems to put the centre of gravity of the VJC somewhere in the Williamsburg area, and reinforces the suggestion of Bruce and several other members, including VJC Founder Wayne Estrada, that we need to become less Richmond-centric. I think this is overdue. One way is to alternate VJC activities between the GR and NVW regions, maybe even months for GR and odd months for NVW regions. Another is to focus activities in Williamsburg, home to other active British car clubs with whom we have already collaborated, eg the Patrick Duffeler luncheon and 1970s Team Marlboro/Formula 1 presentation at the Williamsburg Winery last November. A subsidiary suggestion is to pick a fixed date every month for regular activities, say the third Saturday of the month. Another issue is attracting new membership, we have a wonderful core of loyal members who enjoy each other's company, but I would like to see us grow by attracting new owners of Jaguars. The VJC relationship with Brown's Jaguar is good, we had a well attended club meeting at their showroom last year, they were most hospitable with refreshments and Mike Hardiman has offered it for future meetings.

A last topic is that JCNA is looking for a volunteer club to host the 2010 or 2011 AGMs. We have a natural and most attractive venue in Williamsburg, which has great accommodations, history, the Winery, transportation accessibility, and reasonable weather in March (last year the AGM was at Pittsburg). I think the VJC can do it, with your full support of course. Lets discuss on the 21st.

Roar of Applause

A second Roar of Applause to Dick Geoghegan for 1st place in JCNA Class D 05 for his silver 1962 Mk2 saloon, with 9.99567 points. I cant imagine what the other 0.00433 points represent, maybe a fly speck somewhere.

A Little Collision Strikes Una's Jaguar

Una's maroon 1995 XJ6 suffered a bang up the boot in the local Ukrops, not her fault I may add. The boot lid was badly damaged by the offending SUV and unrepairable, and there was minor damage to the rim of the boot aperture. It turned out that the lid had been repaired once already, the non-factory paint just peeled off where the metal was deformed. I took the car to Collision One in Mechanicsville, owner Beau Morris sourced a good used lid in a few days, and the guys did an excellent job of fitting, colour matching and blending. In fact the back of the car now looks better than it was before the bump. Thanks Beau !