Provinz: 2018 UCR Banquet

The Annual Banquet

By Kathleen Wong, UCR Past President 2017-2018 Photos by Eshel Zweig, Provinz Photographer and Ryan Tam, UCR Member

Report From the Annual Banquet

On Saturday, October 27, about 160 Upper Canada Region (“UCR”) members and friends celebrated a record year of event participation at our Annual Banquet, which took place at the Islington Golf Club. The annual banquet is an occasion to give recognition to our long-time partners, volunteers and members who are the best ambassadors of the Porsche brand.

We were honored to have the following guests:

UCR Past President Kathleen Wong with Porsche Cars Canada President and CEO Marc Ouayoun and UCR President Michael Pohlmann.

Porsche’s Kathrin Menge: a UCR member for 21 years.

• Porsche Cars Canada: Marc Ouayoun, President and CEO, and his wife Vero­nique. Kathrin Menge Customer Rela­tions and Analytics Manager at Porsche Cars Canada, She is also a 21 year UCR member. Porsche Cars Canada has been a long-time supporter of our club and it is the National Sponsor of our Can/Am Challenge Club Race at Mosport during the past 23 years.

Kathleen Wong with Derek Chen of Downtown Porsche.

• Downtown Porsche: Derek Chen, Marketing Manager and his wife Alexis; Wilson Xia, Porsche Sales Ambassador and his partner Carina Wong; Ashley Altomare, Assistant Service Man­ager and Greg Baxter, Workshop Manager. During the past five years, Downtown Porsche has been fueling our membership growth by giving a complimentary first year UCR member­ship to every customer who buys a Porsche from them or renewing the member­ship if the customer is al­ready a UCR member. UCR remains the largest region among 145 regions of the Porsche Club of America (“PCA”). If we include the family or affiliated mem­bers, we have more than 4,000 members.

• Pfaff Porsche: Laurance Yap, Creative Director of Pfaff Automotive Partners and his guest, Anna He

• Porsche Centre North Toronto: John Cappella, Managing Director and Adriano Bernaudo, Marketing Manager

• Porsche Club of America: Lori Schutz, Zone 4 repre­sentative overseeing 12 regions, is from Michigan. Skip Carter, the Editor of PCA Club Racing News and his wife Suesan. Suesan was the Past President of the Grand Prix

Gulzar Butt, with Sajjad Budd (UCR Rally Master)

First Guest Speaker:

Marc Ouayoun, Porsche Cars Canada

Marc became the President and CEO of Porsche Cars Canada in January 2018 after spending six years as the Managing Director and another six years as Sales and Network Development at Porsche France. Marc observes in Canada that there is the same passion towards the Porsche brand as there is in France, and asserts that Canada is one of the fastest growing markets for Porsche in the world. Since January 2018, Marc has visited 17 of the 20 Porsche centres in Canada and his goal is to establish relationships with the team at each location. There are more regional differences in Canada compared to France, so he will focus on having stronger regional marketing campaigns.

Marc believes it is important to understand where the car market is going and to be able to offer the sports cars of the future. The future for Porsche is electric vehicles. Electric can go very well with the Porsche brand because electric vehicles have a low centre of gravity and a lot of instant torque allowing Porsche engineers to leverage these traits with electronics for better drivability and faster acceleration. The Mission E is the first full electric vehicle for Porsche, built with the above in mind.

Marc has recently purchased a 1989 Porsche 964 and he is looking forward to becoming a member of UCR!

Second Guest Speaker

Lori Schutz, PCA Zone 4 Representative –

Lori’s speech will be highlighted in Part 2 of this article in the upcoming issue – stay tuned!

Third Guest Speaker

Skip Carter, PCA Club Racing News Editor

Skip Carter told us there were 31 PCA Club Races in 2018. PCA has approximately 2,000 club racers. He en­couraged us to check out the quarterly PCA Club Racing news which includes many racers’ stories that may entice you into club racing. Check out Roy Tam’s club race video at August 2016 Can/Am Challenge Club Race. The video was produced by Ryan Tam (an UCR volunteer, and lead manager of FlightSquad Media) who captured his dad’s first PCA Club Race experience at Mosport. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ctPW2AOrsys

Recognizing Volunteers

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all UCR volunteers who organized a total of 55 events in 2018 for more than 4,000 participants. About 30% of these events were performance driving events and the remaining 70% were for our members and their families. I have classified these events in four buckets:

1. The first bucket includes Autocross, Introduc­tory Driving School (“IDS”), High Performance Driver Education (“DE”) and Can/Am Challenge Club Race that attracted 1,400 participants. Kudos to our Autocross Co- Chairs – Mario Marrello and Pete Koepfgen, DE Track Chair – Dave Osborne and the track team, and Club Race Co-Chairs – Terry Cassan and Walter Murray. For the first time in UCR history, our DE program reached a milestone with more than 1,000 paid registrations for DE and IDS in 2018. Thank you to DE Registrar – Mary Iantorno for all the hard work behind the scene to handle the registration. At the banquet, I presented a recognition certificate to Walter Murray who had stepped down from Club Race Co-Chair after organizing three successful Can/Am Challenge club races from 2016 to 2018 includ­ing the inaugural GT4 Clubsport Trophy East series at Mosport in 2017.
2. The second bucket includes Driving Tours, Rally, Ski Day, Socials and Tech Sessions that attracted 1,500 participants. I would like to thank Driving Tour Co-Chairs – Peter Hoffman and Stefan Walther, Rally Master – Sajjad Butt, Ski Co-Chairs – Tom Arndt and Don Lewtas, Socials Co-Chairs – Peter and Susan Blake and Tech Session Chair – Roger Stopford. During 2018, we had 14 Driving Tours including the inaugural Winter Driving Tours in Febru­ary and March. At the banquet, I presented a recognition certificate to Peter Hoffman, who had stepped down from Driving Tour Co-Chair (2018) and Driving Tour Chair (2017) and organizing many Driving Tours between 2010 and 2018.
3. The third bucket consists of three Signature events: Open House in the Spring, our Annual Banquet in Oc­tober and Concours d’Elegance & Picnic. I would like to thank Open House Chair – Gregory Sachs and three Open Houses from 2016 to 2018. Gregory is also stepping down from the Board due to the three year term limit for Directors.

Our 2018 Concours d’Elegance & Picnic was held on Sunday, June 10, 2018 and it was the same weekend that we celebrated the 70th Anniversary of the Porsche brand. I was the picnic chair and we had more than 500 participants at the event. I was grateful for the help I received from all the picnic volunteers. Here is the link to the video produced by FlightSquad Media. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OHEK2MPqYzU&t=1s

1. The fourth bucket consists of two community events:

• 2018 was the seventh year that UCR sponsored Driv­en2Smile. At this event, we have approximately 80 higher run group drivers from our Driver Education program giving rides to 300 children for a few laps at Mosport. These children have unique cognitive, medical, and physical considerations and they come from multiple organizations such as Autism Ontario and local chapters and the Down syndrome associations, etc. I would like to thank Driven2S­mile Co-Chairs, Jill Clements and Del Bruce for organizing this event over the past seven years.

Martin Tekela (SSS Chief Instructor), Hazel de Burgh (SSS Co-Chair) and Zahra Teymourtash.

• UCR supports a community event called Street Survival School (“SSS”) which is hosted by the BMW Trillium Club. We had two SSS events in 2018, with one at the Brampton Powerade Centre in May and another at the Sheridan College campus in Oakville at the end of September. This is a one-day driver training program for new drivers within their first ten years of driving. Accord­ing to Statistics Canada, motor vehicle accidents are the cause of 70% of the deaths of drivers in their first 10 years of driving. I would like to thank our SSS Co-Chairs, Hazel de Burgh and Mario Marrello and our SSS Chief Instructor, Martin Tekela.

Mario Marrello (Autocross Chair, SSS Chair) with wife, Karen Marrello.

I would also like to thank both Mario Marrello and Sunil Sharma, who are the Clubreg administrators. A few years ago, we migrated from a manual event registration process to www.clubregistration.net. Clubreg is an event registration tool that automates the registration process and handles credit card payments. It saves our volunteers tons of time and helps us eliminate the cash payment of registra­tion fees at our events. Sunil Sharma will be stepping down from the clubreg administrator role at the end of 2018. I would like to thank Sunil for his work behind the scenes during the past few years.

Kathleen Wong, Ken Jensen (UCR Membership Retention Chair 2002-2018, UCR Webmaster 2013-2018) and Sussi Jensen.

At the banquet, I presented a recognition certificate to Ken Jensen who is one of the longest serving volunteers at UCR. Ken recently stepped down from the webmaster role after five years and the Membership Retention role after 16 years.

Mike Bryan (UCR President 2015 & 2016) with Pam Bryan and Kathleen Wong.

I also presented a recognition certificate to Mike Bryan who is stepping down from the Board after eight years: with two years as Director, two years as Vice President, two years as President and two years as Past President. The eight years of volunteer work at UCR is equivalent to the two term limit of the President in the United States! Since the begin­ning of 2017, Mike is PCA‘s Zone 1 representative oversee­ing 17 Regions within the north-eastern part of United States and the eastern portion of Canada. Terrence Tong, UCR Treasurer, surprised Mike with a Porsche Design wallet that he purchased during his vacation in Germany. The token gift was to show our appreciation to Mike’s eight years of service at UCR.

UCR was a shining star at PCA’s 63rd Annual Porsche Parade which took place at the Lake of the Ozarks, Mis­souri from July 8-14, 2018. UCR received the following two highly acclaimed awards at the Porsche Parade:

1) 2017 National Membership Award – Greatest Actual Growth: UCR had the strongest membership growth among 145 regions at PCA. Thank you Downtown Porsche for the continued support of our membership growth.

2) 2017 Betty Jo Turner Award for Newsletter Excellence: Our Provinz magazine was awarded the best newsletter among 145 regions at PCA. Congratulations to Randy Gananathan (Past Provinz Editor) for leading the Provinz team to win this top-notch award. Randy Gananathan had stepped down from Provinz Editor and passed the baton to Rhonda Rose-Roberts in October 2018.

Judy Tong and Terrence Tong (UCR Treasurer 2017 & 2018).

UCR 2019 Slate of Directors Recommended by the Nominating Committee

According to UCR Bylaws, the President can serve no more than two one-year consecutive terms and the Director can serve no more than three one-year consecutive terms. The Nominating Committee is comprised of the following five individuals: me (President and the Chair of the Com­mittee), Mike Bryan (Past President), Kim Willis (Director) and two UCR members at large, Peter Blake (Socials Co- Chair) and Paul Smith. UCR annual elections took place on Tuesday November 13, 2018. The Nominating Committee advised the following individuals to stand for the positions on 2019 UCR Board:

• Michael Pohlmann as President. He is currently the Vice President
• Terrence Tong as Vice President. He is currently the Treasurer
• Peter Oakes as Treasurer. He is currently a Director
• Kimberly Willis as returning Secretary
• Terry Cassan as returning Director and he is Club Race Co-Chair
• Jackie Metcalfe as new Director and she is Club Race Grid Captain
• Roger Stopford as new Director and he is Tech Session Chair
• David Walker as returning Director. He is Concours Co-Chair
• Stefan Walther as new Director and he is Driving Tour Chair, Social Media Chair and Insurance Chair.

For those members who were not present at our annual banquet, this was the thank you speech that I delivered to the participants:

“Although I am stepping down as President due to the two year term limit for UCR President, I will stay on the Board as Past President in 2019 and 2020.

Walter Murray recruited me as Socials Co-Chair in mid- 2013 and this gave me the exposure to the rest of the Upper Canada Region after I had spent 15 years only in high per­formance driver education events. Mike Bryan handpicked me to be the Vice President in 2015. I would like to thank Walter and Mike for leading me into unchartered territory and it has been an exhilarating and rewarding experience for me, leading UCR during the past two years.

I would like to thank Walter and Mike for their mentor­ing during the past few years. I also want to thank a couple of long-time members who have given me excellent advice over the years: John & Rosemary Adam, Ken & Sussi Jen­sen, Dave Osborne, Del Bruce, Botho and Susan Von Bose.

As the PCA’s motto says, ‘it’s not just the cars, it’s the people’. I have met many awesome UCR members over the years. I have been so touched by the words of encourage­ment that I have received from many of you. By talking to many of you, you kept me inspired. You kept me going. You made me a better President. You made me a better person.

Veronica Pohlmann and Michael Pohlmann (UCR VP 2017 & 2018).

Michael Pohlmann, the incoming President and I have a common vision for the future of the Upper Canada Region. We are also aligned on strategic initiatives and priorities. Reducing the deficit of the monthly Provinz magazine has been the hallmark of my presidency. During my tenure, the Board of Directors has worked on increasing the advertis­ing revenue and reducing the cost of production.

I would like to thank Peter Helston (Advertising and Sponsorship Chair) for recruiting new advertisers since 2017 and increasing our advertising revenue by 10% in 2018. Peter was a Past President and he has over 40 years of experience in the publishing business.

We have also worked on two initiatives to reduce the cost of producing the magazine:

1. We eliminated envelopes from the mailing of Provinz since early 2018 and reinvested the savings in June 2018 Concours d’Elegance & Picnic such that 500 members paid half price at the event.
2. We achieved material cost savings by switching print shops in August 2018 based on the recommendation by Dixon Chan, who is our webmaster. I would like to thank Dixon for taking the initiative to shop around for print shops and perform a due diligence review on behalf of the Board. His recommendation has led to a 20% reduction in the annual printing cost while the print quality of the magazine is maintained. Therefore, the Board of Directors can consider another subsidy for 2019 Concours d’Elegance & Picnic.

Derek Cheung (Digital Editor) is currently working on a digital version of Provinz, by replicating the printed version and adding embedded links to advertisers’ websites and pictures/videos on UCR Facebook. This will be value-added for both our advertisers and members. We plan to roll out the Digital Provinz sometime in 2019. Members will continue to receive the printed Provinz magazine unless they want to opt in the digital version and opt out of the printed version. This may lead to further savings which we can reinvest in future members’ events.

Dixon Chan,UCR Webmaster

Going forward, I plan to continue the Provinz digital initiative by working with Dixon Chan and Derek Cheung. I also plan to follow Ken Jensen’s footsteps to take on the Membership Retention Chair role. I will continue the New Members Social initiative that I started in 2017.”

Recognizing Anniversary Members

At the banquet, we recognized long term members of PCA who have been part of the Porsche family for 5, 10, and every five years after. There were 316 primary members in these categories and 24 (see accompanying pictures) of these member families were present at the banquet:Kathleen Wong with 50th Anniversary members, Leigh and Linda Kelk along with 35th Anniversary members, John and Rosemary Adam and Michael Pohlmann.

• 35th Anniversary, John Adam and Rosemary Adam

30th Anniversary, John and Rose Andrachuk, Richard Roell, Kye Wankum

• 25th Anniversary, Andrew Lam

20th Anniversary: Stephen and Corry Bates, John Cupp, Michael Pohlmann, Glenn and Alexandra Thomas, George Wong, Kathleen Wong

15th Anniversary: Livio Passalent and Jennifer Passalent, Roy Tam

10th Anniversary: Sajjad and Gulzar Butt, Walter Murray and Sheila Harwood, Peter Kuracina, George and Graciela Ralli

5th Anniversary, Charles and Jannina Brooks, Rodney and Janet Butt, Jay and Joanne Diament, Don and Emmy Richardson, Christopher Siou, Ted Youngs

We typically give Porsche pins to new members who join our event for the first time. We welcomed the following new members to UCR:

• Majathia Gagan
• Drew and Karen Dayton
• Matt Gunton
• Peter and Tina Jenkins
• Marlon and Whitney Robin

2018 Enthusiast of the Year Goes to Eric Wang, Driving Tour Host Stefan Walther, 2017 Enthusiast of the Year, announced that Eric Wang was the recipient of 2018 Enthusiast of the Year. Stefan told the audience, “Eric has been participating in more UCR events, especially Driving Tours. He stepped up to host two successful and well-attended Driv­ing Tours – Prince Edward County in July and Niagara in August. Eric went the extra mile to provide refreshments at the meet-up spot and offered thoughtful Porsche-related prizes. At the Niagara driving tour, he surprised a young boy, son of a club member, with a Matchbox Porsche toy — the child was elated, this made his day even more spe­cial! Eric went above and beyond the call of duty: printed turn-by-turn instructions, designed colorful promotion sheets of the route and nearby attractions, and made sure all club members and their guests were nicely accommodated. For the Niagara driving tour, there was a Terry Fox cancer fundraiser nearby his route. Eric did not hesitate to add this to his route and our Driving Tour participants ended up donating over $250 to a good cause.” Eric missed the banquet due to a business trip. I will present the recognition certificate to Eric at another UCR event.

Thank You to All Banquet Volunteers and Participants

I would like to thank John Adam for printing the name badges and table place cards and Ralf and Andrea Heitz for testing the audio and visual equipment before the banquet. I also want to thank Gregory and Izabela Sachs for helping at the check-in desk. Last but not least, thank you Eshel Zweig and Ryan Tam for taking pictures at the banquet.

Thank you to all banquet participants who made 2018 UCR Banquet a great suc­cess! I have enjoyed organizing the UCR annual banquet for the past four years. If any member is interested to be the Annual Banquet Co-Chair in 2019, please contact us at socials@pcaucr.org

(Provinz: Dec 2018)

The Man Who Saved the Porsche 911

Lori Schutz, the daughter of Peter Schutz, was the guest speaker at our 2018 Annual Banquet. Peter Schutz was the CEO of Porsche AG from 1981 to 1987 and he was instrumental in turning around Porsche AG. At our annual banquet on October 27, Lori Schutz (the daughter of Peter Schutz) gave an inspiring speech about how her late father blocked the plan to end produc­tion of the signature 911 model, which remains the quint­essential Porsche. She also told us how Peter made the decision to enter the Porsche 936 in the 1981 24 Hours of Le Mans and won the race.

Peter Schutz was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930. According to industry sources, Ferry Porsche person­ally invited Peter Schutz to apply for the CEO position at Porsche AG. In 1980, when Porsche was in the midst of its first money-losing year, Peter was selected among 12 candidates to be the CEO of Porsche AG. Porsche AG had the following three issues at the time: the exchange rate increased the prices of German parts, the quality control problem, and the lacklustre interest in the new designs of the Porsche 924 and 928 models.

At the same time, the announcement to cancel the production of the Porsche 911 models led to low morale in the engineering department. While Peter was in the office of Helmuth Bott (Chief of Engineering at Porsche AG 1978-1988), he saw a chart that showed the projected production and sales numbers of the 924 and 928 models for the next 20 years, but the line for 911 ended in 1981. Peter used a large black marker to extend the 911’s line to the end of the chart, onto the wall, around the hallway and told Bott to “make it happen”! Peter also discovered that the quality control was merely due to a simple prob­lem related to the camshaft, and that issue was quickly fixed.

During 1981, the Porsche racing team was planning to enter three modified 924s in 24 Hours of Le Mans but Pe­ter knew these models had no chance of winning. The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the world’s oldest sports car endur­ance race and one of the most influential in motorsports history. About 61 days prior to the race on June 13/14, Peter asked the engineer to pull a Porsche 936 from the museum display and install an experimental engine that Porsche had developed for Indy Car Racing. They had a whole team of engineers and staff that worked around the clock to build the race car in time for the race. The car was built at Weissach, which was approximately five kilometers away from the main plant.

Just a few days after Peter decided to enter the Porsche 936 into 1981 24 Hours of Le Mans, he received phone calls from the best race car drivers in the world – Jack Ickx, Derek Bell, Jochen Mass, Al Holbert, Hurley Haywood, Vern Schuppan, and Hans Stuck who all told him they would like to drive a Porsche at Le Mans. Later, Peter found out the reason he got these phone calls… Heinz Metzger (one of the Porsche engine de­signers), had the connection with the race car drivers.

At the 1981 24 Hours of Le Mans, Porsche tested the 2.6L engine which was derived from a never-raced Indianapolis 500 engine and fitted it in a pair of 936 chassis. Jack Ickx shared one of the updated 936s with Derek Bell; Jochen Mass, Vern Schuppan and Hurley Haywood drove the other. The engine test was suc­cessful. After the first hour of the race, Ickx and Bell built a large advance and remained in the lead for the rest of the race ( total of 354 laps) and they won by an even greater margin than in 1976 – 14 laps! Porsche also set a record in the history of Le Mans because the winning car ran the whole 24 hours without any issues other than adding engine oil and fuel and changing the brakes and tires. And it was the first time in 20 years that Professor Porsche went to watch the race.

During Peter’s tenure at Porsche AG, Porsche world­wide sales almost doubled from 28,000 units in 1980/81 to 53,000 units in 1986. The ultimate 911, (the 959), was also developed in 1986. Given Peter’s background as an engineer and his wealth of experience in marketing and management, Peter became a world-class speaker and presenter in many seminars and conferences after he retired. Peter passed away in November 2017 at the age of 87.

Peter wrote a book called, “The Driving Force, Get­ting Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People” and the book is about his life journey and lessons learned during his professional career. Lori Schutz will be the guest speaker at our Tuesday, March 12, 2019 Social, which will be hosted by Porsche Centre North Toronto. Advance registration is required and you can order the book when you register at www.clubregistration.net The cost of the book is C$32.50 or US$25.00. Please bring cash or cheque when you pick up the book from Lori at the Tuesday, March 12th Social, so you can save the shipping cost.

(Provinz: Jan 2019)