New BMWCCA Roundel layout

[BillWilliams]

if you are on Facebook and "like" the BMW Car Club of America, they just posted a post that the Roundel is one of the best benefits of the club and it is the best Car Club Magazine.

This gives you a chance to respond directly to the club if you are so inclined; I did earlier today.

[StandingPedals]

I wrote a detailed letter to both Satch and Bruce about how I thought

1. Roundel has taken a step backward in design;

2. Roundel has taken a step backward in content;

3. The sloppy editing suggests staff inattention; and

4. This all shows poor prioritization of resources by the Board.

I encourage others to do the same.

Interestingly, my free trial issue of Bimmer magazine has Mike Miller's Tech column at the front of the magazine, not squeezed into the back. And there are neither odometer nor conspicuous family consumer pictures. Hmmm....

John Trevey

Austin TX

[BillWilliams]

Good items to address and I too just signed up for the free trial to BIMMER.

I understand Satch and Bruce. Where does Frank Patek (sp?) fit in the pecking order?

[StandingPedals]

Frank Patek is the Executive Director of BMW Car Club of America

e-mail addresses as follows:

Satch Carlson, Roundel Editor: satch@roundel.org

Bruce Hazard, BMWCCA President: president@bmwcca.org

Frank C. Patek II: frank_patek@bmwcca.org

[SamAdams]

So has anyone written letters or better yet, gotten a response from any of the higher ups in the Club?

Was glad to see Jackie posting here as I feel that Bimmer is an excellent magazine. And adding Jenny is a definite plus. A good mix of new, old, history and tuned cars. It seems the Bimmer staff is more enthusiastic about BMW and its cars and people than Satch is. Remember when Satch had a column for Autoweek? I do. Wonder why that column went away? Hhmm. Oh I remember now.

BMW Car from the UK is also excellent but with a European slant but it is very expensive here in the US. Both however are much better than The Roundel which is a sad commentary on how the Board (led by Bruce Hazard) and Satch Carlson have mismanaged the magazine and club. And now with Mr Carlson's "upgrades" The Roundel will slip even further.

[Southernboy]

It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks the constant pictures of kids, odometers and peoples driveways full of cars is a little lame.

I just got my Roundel the other day, (snail mail to Europe) so I’ve just now seen the changes in the flesh. This is the first time that I have ever chimed in on something like this, but I think that both Rob and Jonathan have the right idea, and that we should first write them and let them know that we are unhappy with the changes and then give them a few months to “hopefully” improve things. If after that there’s no improvement, then we really do have a problem. It looks like quite a few bridges have been burnt with this decision, but maybe there is still a chance to turn things around.

As a 25 year CCA member, I also belong to the long list of people who used to read the Roundel from cover to cover the first day I got it. Unfortunately that more or less stopped in the early 2000s when the new content started to be less and less interesting for me. Even though I’ve lived in Europe for nearly 15 years now, I’ve never dropped my membership to the CCA. The Roundel was always sort of my anchor to the US BMW scene. I still enjoy getting my copy once a month, and instead of jumping ship, I’d like to see it get better (or at least not worse). I’ll definitely be sending them a mail.

Rob if you are still reading this, I love your column and the hardest thing (bar no changes) will be only hearing from the Hack Mechanic every second month. You make me feel normal for trying to keep a “higher single digit” fleet of old cars on the road. Please keep up the good work and I can’t wait for your book.

Cheers, Kevin

[nbcbird]

For those of you who don't know or remember, Satch has an unfortunate episode at Bartlett High School in Anchorage (Google it yourself) which (more or less) lead his demise at Autoweek. IMHO his writing hasn't been comparable since, and I lost a lot of respect for him. I'm not surprised to see how events have recently transpired at the Roundel.

[c.d.iesel]

nbcbird in Seattle wrote:

For those of you who don't know or remember,

Satch has an unfortunate episode at Bartlett

High School in Anchorage (Google it yourself)

which (more or less) lead his demise at Autoweek

IMHO his writing hasn't been comparable since,

and I lost a lot of respect for him. I'm not

surprised to see how events have recently

transpired at the Roundel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett_High_School_(Anchorage,_Alaska)

your right, and i agree, and always think of it

everytime i see his name or read anything....

glad you said what many may be thinking all this time.

[Koblenz]

It seems the Bimmer staff is more enthusiastic about BMW and its cars and people than Satch is.

To me, this sums it up. Example: I flash my brights at old BMWs as a "thumbs up" gesture, not as a speed trap warning.

The enthusiasm has gone from car enthusiast in many cases. I look at our 02s and see a real joy. I drive by the salvage yard in hopes of saving another brother. I love seeing these classics on the road, meeting the owners, chuckling over the NLA items and never really wanting know the total amount spent to eliminate the fuel smell in the cabin.

My 02 adds so much to a day that it makes the off days do-able.

Enthusiasm is different than having a car. The Roundel has cars.

[SamAdams]

nbcbird in Seattle wrote:

For those of you who don't know or remember,

Satch has an unfortunate episode at Bartlett

High School in Anchorage (Google it yourself)

which (more or less) lead his demise at Autoweek

IMHO his writing hasn't been comparable since,

and I lost a lot of respect for him. I'm not

surprised to see how events have recently

transpired at the Roundel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett_High_School_(Anchorage,_Alaska)

your right, and i agree, and always think of it

everytime i see his name or read anything....

glad you said what many may be thinking all this time.

Kinda hated to be the one who hinted at it but I as an Autoweek reader since the early '80s I remember when all that happened. Heck the state of Alaska has a law named after him. And I was surprised and somewhat disappointed when the BMW CCA hired him.

And like many of you who knew I think about that whenever I see his writings in The Roundel.

[ndog]

boy that was a fucked up high school...

[BMWCCA1]

Kinda hated to be the one who hinted at it but I as an Autoweek reader since the early '80s I remember when all that happened. Heck the state of Alaska has a law named after him. And I was surprised and somewhat disappointed when the BMW CCA hired him.

And like many of you who knew I think about that whenever I see his writings in The Roundel.

I was Club president when we made the decision to hire Satch as a columnist. The suggestion came from our editor, Yale Rachlin, who I hired to replace the Club's longtime publisher, Parker Spooner. We had a long discussion about hiring Satch and decided on his merit as an automotive writer and with the hope that we would be giving him a second chance. We also got him for cheap and gained as much from having his name attached to our Club as he got from gaining employment.

There are even more sordid details about his troubles in Alaska that I've since learned from his friends, but you have to remember that in the end he was not found to have broken any laws. I also have it on good authority (several discussions with the Mandels of Autoweek) that the Alaska episode had nothing to do with Satch's firing from Autoweek, nor was it due to his talent or contribution to the magazine. To say any more would be a violation of confidence.

Satch was and is a good writer and a knowledgeable editor. That being said, I had nothing to do with his being hired as Roundel editor-in-chief and even the board that made that choice took a long time to move beyond the "interim" appointment and were, in fact, rushed to the initial hiring decision by their own disastrous handling of a back-up plan for the esteemed Mr. Rachlin. The more things change at BMW CCA, the more they seem the same!

[ndog]

boy that was a fucked up highskool.send lief's son(inlaw) up thier.;Lance armstrong of BMW

[DerKrieger]

Oh, hell; THIS is where all the dinosaurs have come to die!

I've missed you guys everywhere else on Tha Intarwebz and I'm glad I found a tip to look here.

Maybe I'm the 'youngster' here since I've only been a 'CCA member for about 28½ years; but those who know me know I've been active. Those who know me even better know I had a 2002 (I technically still own one!), so my credentials are obviously impeccable.

To the subject at hand, I really don't think Satch's questionable past is really relevant to what's happening with the ROUNDEL. I'm at least a little disappointed that it came up and that Phil felt moved to elaborate on that time.

What I am disappointed in is today's ROUNDEL. As with many of you other Pleistocene era survivors, I've found it to be less and less relevant and interesting to me over the years and the loss of my favorite columnists is one I will feel deeply. I know Mike least well of the bunch, but, damn, I sure loved reading about fixing those 2002s, even years after I needed to care. Jenny is a friend; Joe is a friend; I would always read them. I, too, am sick of odometer shots and overfilled driveways. Maybe I'm just too damn old.

Because of that, I'm also unlikely to quit the club because so many of my dearest friends are in it; but I see a lot of people who don't have the same personal ties and history with the club making their decision not to renew as a result of these changes. I don't have an answer, but I can tell you that this input is available to those in charge. This thread is linked to a thread I started on the BMW CCA website forum. It is not the first and I doubt it will be the last. So the discussion continues ...

[ts888]

And another dinosaur crawls from the ooze... I've been gone so long my old screen name (velocewest) no longer works.

To Rob and Phil -- nice of you to see all sides. Now stop defending Snatch and the CCA. Neither needs or deserves defense or apologists.

Jenny -- Glad you will be getting some work from Bimmer. Back when I read the Roundel, you made me spray coffee out my nose more than once.

I quit the CCA about 10 years ago. It was obvious the club had become little more than a mouthpiece for BMWNA. Plus I was tired of them leaning on my local BMW club to be assimilated.

And that local club perseveres! The BMWACA -- that's right, nospace A. The BMW Automobile Club of America. It still exists. And, if you're tired of waiting for the CCA board to grow a pair and tell NA to uff da, you can join the ACA. With enough interest, the ACA could go national again, and become the club the CCA was 20 or 30 years ago.

Just an idea.

Tony