Happy New Year to all of you and I wish you all the best for 2015, with your family, at work, and most importantly, in good health. How are you doing on your new year resolutions? Have you already started the activities that you set yourself as goals for this year e.g. eat healthier, exercise more, read more books, don’t wait with your taxes until April 14, spend less time in front of your computer screen, and do more driving events with the MG Clubs of Chicago? The first four of these five examples are, like most resolutions, straight forward. You just begin and you’re off to a good start. The last one however, do more driving events with the MG Clubs of Chicago, is quite different as it takes a few things thing that you should start doing now in order to realize the New Year’s resolution when the driving season starts. 

First of all you have to get your MG ready. If you are like me, you may have noticed some little things with your MG while driving it last year. This is the time to diagnose the issues, order the parts, and put them on your MG so that you are ready for the Spring Tune Up, usually the first event of our driving season. I know that it is cold in the garage, but if you wait until the spring, the driving season may be half over by the time that your MG is ready to take the open roads. If you plan to have someone do the necessary work on your car, it is not much different. During the winter months many commercial MG garages are not very busy while in the spring it may be harder to schedule an appointment. This is the time of year to get the MG ready for the 2015 Driving Events.

Then you have to think which events you liked last year, or which events you were sorry to have missed last year, and make a plan to attend these (again) in 2015. I suggest that you go through last year’s newsletters and read the driving

events reports to refresh your memories. Did you enjoy some of the driving events and would you want to participate again? Do some of the pictures make you feel sorry that you weren’t able to participate and you don’t want that to happen again? If your answers include a few Yes’s, please keep your personal and work calendars a little tentative so that you can lock-in the dates as soon as the 2015 Driving Events Calendar becomes available in March. 

And lastly, think of any events that you would like to see on our 2015 Driving Events Calendar. We had a very nice variety of events: short tours, weekend trips, rallies, and social events but we were a little light on garage visits and auto cross. Auto cross is quite difficult to organize as it requires a large facility or parking lot to safely run the events. The Austin Healy Club and the Miata Club welcome MG in their events; it just needs a little bit of coordination. Garage visits or tours are relatively simple to organize, but it might be harder to find interesting private garages or classic car related businesses. If you think that you can help with some of these, or with any other new events that might be of interest to our clubs, please let us know. We are open to all suggestions and we’d be happy to assist you if you are a first time organizer.

Please give me a call at 847 342 9804 or email me at reinoutvogt@gmail.com if you have suggestions on making the 2015 Driving Events better. I look forward to hear your ideas, questions, and concerns.





"The more you drive, the more you smile".
-- Reinout Vogt