Hello and welcome to the Porsche Club of America – St. Louis Region. You are now a part of, and contributing to, a rich part of Porsche ownership and Club history in your St. Louis Region. The geographic area we cover is large… click on General Info, then About the Region to see what I mean. We are home to enthusiastic Porsche owners in Eastern & Central Missouri and Southern Illinois. The St. Louis Region was the 14th Club to form, officially chartered in 1959, out of the current 147 clubs that exist now.

We offer a wide array of activities including driving, instructional and social events. So, whether you want to challenge your skills at the track, take a spirited ride through the twists and turns on a touring drive, show off your beauty in a car show or simply swap Porsche stories at a monthly Thirsty Thursday dinner, we welcome you to join us. PCA membership offers many outstanding benefits, and pays for itself with the generous discounts offered by our Region sponsors. We have a lot of fun things to do and a lot of fun people to do it with. If I can help you find something fun to do, feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you,

Steve Sullivan

I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

One constant in today’s world is change, and our region and its leadership are not immune from this. There have been several major changes at the St. Louis Region over the last few weeks.

Our Region President, Bob Paster, due to health issues, recently tendered his resignation from his position, asking to remain on the board in a less demanding role until he recovers fully.  At our January board meeting, the board accepted his resignation and, through several parliamentary steps, voted to appoint me to fill his position for the remainder of his term. Jim Fiss will remain Vice President.

In addition, Catherine Ham, citing increased work travel, tendered her resignation as Secretary. Patty Paster filled in for Catherine at the January meeting and has volunteered to continue to fulfill the duties for the remainder of the year. The board will be asked to confirm her as our new secretary at our March meeting.

We thank Bob for his service to the Region over the years and as President in the last year. We all wish him well and hope for a quick full and complete recovery. We also thank Jim Fiss and Nancy Goodman for their extra efforts in Bob’s absence.

Catherine served in this tough and thankless position for about seven years. Our greatest thanks go out to her for her efforts. We wish her well as she continues as a club member.

I look forward to serving as your region President this year. If you have any suggestions or questions, please fell free to email me at pres@stl.pca.org or Steve@SteveSellsStLouis.com.

Moving forward, we have a full calendar of region events, our HPDE dates are set and we have some great region leadership. Be sure to check the calendar later in this Plauderei, on our website and our Facebook page to make sure you don’t miss out.

I look forward to seeing you at some of our many Regional events.

Well, you finally got me. After 37 years in St. Louis Region PCA, I figured it was finally my time to take on the duties of President. Fifteen years ago, Steve Sullivan invited me to be on the Board, and I have learned from the best. Thanks to all who have proceeded me and set such a remarkable example for me to follow.  Thanks also for your offers to help me as I embark on this adventure. I want you all to know how thankful I am for your faith in me and am eager to start this adventure. I’m finally at the stage in life where the kids are out of the house and leading their own productive lives, and my commitments to other organizations have diminished, so I’m ready and eagerly looking forward to all the events and adventures which we’re all looking forward to in the next couple years.

Hopefully, Covid will abate and we’ll be able to do all the fun driving, track, and social activities that we’ve enjoyed over the years. If not, we’ll adapt as we have the last two years. Fortunately our drives are naturally socially distanced; we may just have to have outdoor picnics instead of eating in restaurants. As always, and as with all events we do, safety is our top priority and that will not change.

Thanks to the warm weather over the holiday weekend, I was able to give my Porsche a little exercise, just running up and down Highway 40.  I’ve found Christmas Day an excellent opportunity to drive with very little traffic!

Thanks to everyone who planned, set up and attended the annual holiday party at the Missouri Athletic Club West. Pam, Gail and Patty did a wonderful job picking a delicious menu, setting up beautiful decorations and a special thanks to Patty for making the delicious chocolate Porsches. I know firsthand how much time and effort went into their production.

Thanks again for your show of support. I look forward to my two year term as your president and two years of fun activities, great track days and hopefully lots of social gatherings. In my 37 years as a member I’ve seen a lot of change, but one constant over the years has been the realization that “It’s not just the cars, it’s the people” is definitely true and not just a cliche.  Fortunately for all of us, the St. Louis Region has the best people in all of the PCA.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Robert W. Paster

 

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

As my 2-year term as President of your club draws to a close, I would like to thank you all for coming along for the ride. Parts of it were a bit bumpy, as we navigated our way through the unparalleled challenges posed by the pandemic, and mourned the loss of longtime club member, treasurer, and friend, Dan Sokol. Smoothing out the bumps wouldn’t have been possible without the perseverance, energy, and creative minds of our club’s Board of Directors, Committee members, and other leaders/volunteers. They found a way to continue hosting events, while keeping the safety of our members a priority. Thank you for your patience as we worked through these bumps.

While navigating new terrain, we tried many new things. When the CDC told us that gathering indoors was more risky for Covid transmission, we looked into doing more things outside or virtually. For example, when the weather was agreeable, board meetings were held outside at a park pavilion in Clayton. We started using Zoom when it was too cold to meet outside. Despite returning to in-person Board meetings, we continued to use Zoom concurrently, to allow members to attend virtually if they prefer. We started selecting Thirsty Thursday restaurant venues offering outdoor seating. The HPDE (High Performance Drivers Education) committee
replanned an HPDE around restrictions that didn’t allow instructors and students to be in the car together. With constantly changing local Covid regulations, juggling the calendar became the norm. As a result, we learned to communicate last-minute changes to the membership a lot faster, utilizing our email blast tool and social media outlets.

Thinking differently also led us to try a few new events. The club held its first stargazing event, an outdoor get-together to view the stars with Porsche friends. Members enjoyed a tour of Archangel Motorsports, getting a glimpse into the world of professional racing. And our first women’s-only Intro-HPDE introduced about 30 women to the sport.

But of course, we didn’t change tried and true favorites. Many informative Tech sessions, exhilarating drives, and Auto Shows still made it onto our calendar. And we are looking forward to the return of our Holiday Gala this month, after a year’s hiatus.

I have learned a lot and had a lot of fun these past 2 years. I am thankful for those who have helped me figure out challenges along the way, and for all the great new friends I’ve made. I will continue as an active member of the Board in 2022 and beyond. So, if I don’t see you at the Gala, I’ll see you around at a future event!

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

 

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

I’m a proud mama. Last month, my youngest (Sara) drove in their first HPDE event at WWTR and LOVED IT! Greg, Sara, and I have been doing autocross events together for about a year now. After attending the Women on Wheels (WoW) HPDE event in September as a spectator, Sara got an itch to try HPDE. So we registered for the Fall HPDE, and the rest is history. Sara had a great instructor, who provided the guidance and support to make it a fun and educational event. I’m certain that Sara will return at a future track event. As usual, our HPDE committee did a fantastic job organizing and executing this 3 day driving event. I’d like to extend them a big “Thank you!” for all the work they put into it. I also want to thank our generous sponsors (Porsche St. Louis, West County Auto Body, ET Tuning, JML Audio of St. Louis, and STL Best Films & Coatings) and driving instructors. Our great HPDE events wouldn’t be possible without you!

Speaking of great events, join your Porsche friends for a drive to Fast Eddie’s in Alton for lunch. Enjoy a November “Valentine’s” Brunch at YaYa’s in Chesterfield with your sweetheart. And if you’d like to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes workings of your club, or would like to get more involved in organizing club events, join us for our bi-monthly Board Meeting in Clayton. And if you’re up for a final Fall road trip before it gets cold, be sure to register for the mid-month Eureka Springs Porsche Palooza by November 1st.

Then for December, be sure to mark Friday, December 17 on your calendar for our annual Holiday Gala. This year, we will be returning to the Missouri Athletic Club – West, where we held our 2019 event. Registration opens later this month.

Check out the articles in this newsletter for more details about all of these upcoming events. And with Winter just around the corner, be sure to take advantage of the nice days, and get your P-cars out of the garage to see the Fall colors!

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

 

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

I’m writing this just a few days after our club’s inaugural Women on Wheels HPDE, and it was aptly named “WoW”! During this one-day event geared towards introducing women to HPDE, the WWT paddock and classroom were alive with so much positive energy. The enthusiasm was strong, not just from participants, but also from volunteers, instructors, sponsors, friends, and families. A large number of students had never driven on a track. By the time they finished their first driving sessions, you could already see the big smiles on their faces. Before the end of the day, many participants were already saying they were definitely going to be back! In fact, my own daughter wants to try a DE now. WoW, indeed!

The Porsche St. Louis Fall HPDE will be happening around the middle of this month. I’ll be interested to see how many WoW participants return. But if the track isn’t your cup of tea, we have a couple of drives planned this month. The Fall Color Tour and Mark Twain Run are both happening towards the end of the month. You can enjoy driving the curvy roads with cooler temperatures and a grand display of Fall colors.

If you prefer to admire Porsches at a more leisurely pace, check out our biennial All-Porsche Auto Show in Clayton. There will be a large variety of models shown, representing much of Porsche’s history of cars. As of this writing, 36 cars are already registered. There are a few slots left if you’d like to sign up to display your Porsche.

And if you would like to drive somewhere to support a worth cause, join your Porsche friends at our first club volunteer event at the Little Bit Foundation. The Foundation’sfocus is to remove barriers to learning and help students in under-resourced school
communities succeed. Come out and support this great organization.

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

 

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

I feel like we’ve entered the heart of “car season”.  There seems to be a lot of car-related events happening for our own region, for other     PCA regions, and beyond.  Today (August 21), my family watched a bit of the 24 Hours of LeMans, streamed on YouTube.  The start was more dramatic than usual, since the           race began in the rain, leading to many cars of the track almost right away.  Some locals not afraid of potential rain showed of their cars at Cars & Coffee at Westport.  And then some other folks watched Indy Car racing live at World Wide Technology Raceway.  And on the 22nd, a number of members toured Archangel Motorsports, home of the race teams managed by St. Louis Region’s Mike Johnson.  Definitely a busy weekend in the car world.

Starting of September, join your Porsche friends at our monthly club social, “Thirsty Thursday”.  This month, it will take place at Schlafly Bankside in St. Charles on September 2nd.  And then on 9/11, there’s no shortage of Porsche car events to choose from, possibly due to the date being “911”?  Club members will be enjoying the Kicks on 66 car show together at the PCA tent in Edwardsville.  Others will be travelling to Indianapolis to take part in the Porsche Sportscar Together event hosted by PCA National.  Still on the same weekend, others will be travelling to HPDE events hosted by nearby PCA Regions at Putnam Park and Heartland (and possibly other locations, too).  Greg and I will be checking out Heartland, and we can’t wait, because it’ll be a new track for us!

After Heartland, it’ll be back to the track the following weekend for me.  On 9/18, our club is hosting our first Women on Wheels (WoW) HPDE, a one-day introductory event to encourage more women to try HPDE.  Being a new event for us, we had no idea what sort of response we’d get.  We were pleasantly surprised to sell out the event for 40 participants, and very thankful that 30 people volunteered to be instructors! (Thank you!!!)  I’m looking forward to this exciting day!

The next day, on 9/19, JML Audio will be hosting their annual “Vehicle Enhancement Tech Session,” where they’ll show you all sorts of great technology upgrades that they can do for your car.

And then in the middle of all that, our most exciting and special event will occur!  We will be having our bi-monthly board of directors meeting in Clayton!  All joking aside, please join us if you’d like to get more involved in your club!  There’s a lot of Porsche events to choose from!

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

July flew by for me. It was a busy month I’m writing this the day after returning homefrom a great week at the Porsche Parade in French Lick, Indiana. The skies were cloudy and intermittently rainy, resulting in moderatetemperatures. The downside was that the Concours was held in the parking garage
instead of on the golf course, to keep cars and people dry.

Speaking of the Concours, congratulations go to Liz and Reid Vann for placing 1st in their class for their beautiful 1957 4-Cam 356 Carrera Speedster. And congrats to Gail Griffifor winning Women’s Closest to the Pin in the golf tournament. And then, Greg and I placed 3rd and 2nd respectively in our separate classes in Autocross. By the way, it was the longest Autocross course we’ve ever been on, at over a mile in length! It was a lot of fun, despite being a long day.

There were many tours offered throughout the week. On Tuesday, we went to the Dallara IndyCar Factory and Museum. On Friday, we visited the Griots Garage bottling plant and distribution center. We also heard good things from others about the Buffalo Trace and Churchill Downs tours. If tours weren’t your thing, there were also Tech seminars, RC racing, dinner trains, and a 5K race. Then there were the Rallies. The Gimmick rally was cool in that it ended at a Drive-In theatre for a showing of the
movie, LeMans. All in all, there was a good variety of events for everyone to enjoy.

Since we didn’t stay to the end of the week at the Ozark Parade in 2018, we decided to stay this time, and go to the Parade of Porsches. We’re glad we did! It was really amazing, to see that many Porsche together, cruising around town. The cruise went from the French Lick Resort to Patoka Lake Winery and back. The best part was when we reached the turn-around point at the winery and began to head back to the resort. There, we had Porsches going in both directions, waving at each other. I really liked that a lot of the locals were out in their driveways to watch the parade.

If you weren’t able to make this year’s Parade, mark your calendars for Parade 2022, which will take place in Pocono Manor, Pennsylvania, June 12-18. Or if you can wait until 2024, the location should be somewhere closer to us in the center of the country.

In local club events for this month, we have a couple planned indoors, so we can stay out of the August heat. We will be having our monthly Thirsty Thursday dinner social at Urban Chestnut in the Grove on August 5. And on August 22, Archangel Motorsports will be opening its IMSA Race shop for us for an Open House. Mark your calendars, so you don’t miss these!

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

Change. It can be good or not so good. I felt like there was change for the better in June. With the number of vaccinated people increasing and Covid cases decreasing, most restrictions on gatherings had been lifted in our region by May. As a result, more people began emerging from their homes to work, travel, shop, and gather. Greg and I attended a local Cars & Coffee event at Westport Though not a PCA event, we saw many Porsches and chatted with several PCA members. They were all thrilled to be doing something that had not been possible since the Fall of 2019. And just a week before that, we had a great time at our Region’s HPDE at World Wide Technology Raceway. We enjoyed driving our Porsches like they were designed to be driven and learned a lot from our instructors. We also enjoyed socializing between runs on the course and running inside to cool off. Wow, it was a hot weekend.

Speaking of “WOW” and HPDE, our Region is working on something new for this Fall. We will be hosting our first Women on Wheels (WoW) HPDE in September. This will be an all-women event to introduce more female drivers to the sport in a more approachable, one-day setting. I am proud to be part of this inaugural event!

Greg and I are looking forward to this year’s Porsche Parade, taking place July 11-17 in French Lick, Indiana. We last attended Parade when it was in the Ozarks in 2018. It was wonderful socializing, doing autocross, touring the area, and just being surrounded by Porsches and Porsche people. This annual gathering is held in rotating locations. About every 3 years, it is held somewhere that’s close enough for St. Louis Region members to drive to. This year, we have nearly 60 Region members attending Parade. If you’re going, I look forward to seeing you there!

But if Indiana’s a bit farther than you’d like to go, check out some local events, such as this month’s Thirsty Thursday (TT) at Olympia Kebob House on July 8th. Note that this month’s TT will be held on the second Thursday this month. Or if it’s getting too hot outside, just get into your car, crank up the A/C and take a drive. Explore the area or just enjoy a drive in your car. We are lucky that there are so many great driving roads in the area, so be sure to take advantage of them!. Regardless of what you choose to do, you’ll probably notice how the environment is changing, in that more people are out and about. Take advantage of the good change while it is here.

Happy Motoring!

Nancy

Greetings St. Louis Region Members!

Missouri weather is ever changing, from day to day, or even within a day. I’m writing this in late April, and yesterday we experienced our last snowfall for this past Winter (hopefully). I had thought it was safe to switch to summer tires a month ago, but apparently, I was wrong. Hopefully, those of you who were as optimistic as me were able to get through the snow. Or maybe you were able to just stay off the roads for half a day until the snow all melted, and Winter became Spring again. To stay, I think.

There’s a lot going on this month in our Region. Our Club Sponsor, Porsche St. Louis, is kicking off May with their Cars & Coffee event on May 1. Bring your Porsches, a check out their cars in the showroom. It’ll be a great time to catch up with your Porsche friends, too.

Next up is our monthly Thirsty Thursday dinner. It will be held at Llywelyn’s in St. Charles on May 6th. Then on May 8, join the Columbia Porsche Group (CPG) in a drive. It will begin in Columbia and end in St. James at the Public House Brewing Company.

If the weather cooperates, we will have an in-person, Regional Board meeting at Shaw Park on May 12. After meeting via Zoom for most of the last year, meeting face-to-face will be a nice change of pace.

Then, on May 16, we have an encore presentation of our popular Mark Twain Run. If you like driving on twisty roads, this drive is for you. It’s one of my personal favorites.

To close out the month, CPG will have their annual Memorial Day get-together in Columbia. More info on all of these events can be found within this newsletter.

And last but not least, I would like to thank all the club volunteers and all our club sponsors, who make all of these fun events possible! Volunteer organizers’ names are listed with the information with each event. Be sure to thank them for all their hard work! And be sure to support our sponsors. Their contact information can be found on our stlpca.org website under the “Sponsors” tab. Or find out about their products andservices by checking out the information contained within this newsletter. Perhaps they can help you get your Porsche ready to enjoy the Spring season that is here to stay!

Happy Motoring!

Nancy