TomCox

May I ask what you have done to bring change to the club? Have you discussed your ideas for change with Directors or put them down on paper and when? How have you supported the hobby in recent years? What specifics can you cite which indicate a lack of debate amongst "the lemmings" on the board? You have nebulous somewhat condescending opinions. What are your suggestions? As a contemporary, a life member of AACA, and a life-long hobbyist, I'd be interested in any constructive ideas you may have.

Please send contact information to Tom Cox tntoldcarz@aol.com or call 540-819-5850 I am an AACA Director and also with the Virginia Museum of Transportation. This car was built in Lynchburg Virginia, and we would be very interested

Folks, there was an error in the printed version of the Inquirer and corrections have been made to the online story. This is a very historic moment for our club, and we want to make sure everyone has the story correct. Our official statement at this time is as follows : Earlier today, The Philadelphia Inquirer released an exciting story announcing the transfer of the Philadelphia Free Public Library's entire automotive reference collection to the AACA Library and Research Center and the Simeone Museum. Unfortunately, there was an error in the original story which incorrectly referenced an entity other than the AACA Library and Research Center as a partner in the acquisition. The online story has since been corrected and may be viewed at: https://www.inquirer.com/arts/simeone-foundation-philadelphia-antique-auto-club-hershey-pa-free-library-archive-20191209.html The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) and the Simeone Museum are proud to be the recipients of this vast collection of important documents and will release a joint statement in the very near future. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Chris Ritter or Stacy Zimmerman at AACA at 717-534-1910, critter@aaca.org or szimmerman@aaca.org

Unfortunately this is rather incomplete. For those who wish to see a more well rounded account, I encourage them to read the posts Matt Hinson suggests...there is more to come.

Hi Glenn, Hope things are going well down in Danville. Our newly elected Governor does also own a big block Corvette. We are in the process of getting him a membership. Thanks for always keeping the hobby out front in your thoughts Best, Tom

AACA does have a very attractive Mileage Award Program which recognizes those who drive AACA accepted vehicles, so in essence we do have a grille badge which anyone would be proud to put on their car,...even snowflakes ; ) . If you go to the website AACA.ORG click on member info and then click Mileage Award Program on the drop down menu. That will take you to the necessary paperwork to obtain the AACA Mileage Award Badge. Its done on the honor system, but as you reach each driving milestone you can apply to receive additional stars to put on the badge representing how many miles you have driven your AACA acceptable vehicle. It looks like this

Chuck, I sent you a message on this. Thanks

The Museum Board in addition to being self appointed, may remove a sitting Board member for any reason whatsoever (neither is conducive to good practice in my opinion). In this case, the Museum leadership never bothered to contact me regarding their intentions or reasoning. They did however have one of their members call to ask if I was attending that particular meeting, which I was not. I'm sure they were emboldened by my absence. I might add that I have since found their vote was not unanimous. In absentia, the Museum leadership elected to shoot the messenger, but never had the fortitude to contact me prior to or after their actions, which speaks volumes. Museum leadership made this a personal issue, and took the opportunity to take a swipe at the entire club as this decision was made with full knowledge that I would be National President again this year. Such an action is also very telling about how they were postured for future discussions,...or lack thereof. I could say more, but it serves no higher purpose. Just know that as always, I put the hobby and the membership first, and in this case suffered the consequences of carrying out the duties of my job representing the will of the Board on behalf of the membership. I look forward to our future, as the Club and our Library continue to be very consequential to the entire worldwide automotive hobby.

The third party or overseers to which you refer was part of the proposed governance structure of the Letter of Intent to merge the two entities. Of course, as you know, the club Board voted that down. There is no third party oversight at the Museum. Additionally, the Museum Board is not elected by the Museum Membership, but are selected and appointed by their own nominations committee comprised of Museum Board members. In essence they appoint themselves and are beholding only to themselves as a practical matter. The Museum has members, but they have no voting power unlike the membership of AACA which has voting power. This was a major sticking point in negotiations as your National AACA Board did not wish to diminish your voting powers.

Bob while I'm an infrequent poster here as I still work 50 + hours a week, I first joined this club at age 13, and am a lifetime AACA member. In recent years I have followed your posts . You always appear to be reasonable, but your comments here compel me to respond to your suppositions which are ill founded. You apparently have missed the point that our entire merger committee on the club side volunteered to step aside and delegate negotiations to a third party non board affiliated group of members, many of whom are substantial advocates for and donors to the Museum. We in fact asked the Museum TO KEEP DISCUSSIONS OPEN. Which is hardly as you charactersize " mind alreadly made up and sees the Museum as an enemy to be FOILED by whatever means (Seriously??) Our offer to the Museum of this continued dialogue through a third party group was rebuffed by demands that we provide full financial support for 2017 for the privilege of having them sit down with that third party group. You will see that letter on this forum. Clearly if there were egos involved they did not come from our side. Our group has spent hundreds of hours on this issue, and I have personally logged nearly 5,000 miles of driving to meetings in Hershey. We have taken this very seriously. We want the club and Museum to be together, but at what cost? Would it matter to you if we made a bad deal which wasn't in the interests of our membership? I have no doubt that if we made a sweetheart deal which lopsidedly benefited the Museum and disenfranchised your voting rights as a member you would be more bellicose than you are now. I would also like to point out that while Steve is intimately involved in this matter as you would expect and for which we are grateful, The "rebuttal" you reference did not come from him, but directly from your Board. Your assertion that we seem "insecure" in our position is interesting given that our Board votes on all relevant Museum issues have been 100% unanimous, which Is difficult with the most benign of motions. I can assure you we are more than confident in our positions, and with good reason. I have faith you will eventually feel the same way. The Museum has presented their case Bob, and we are responding and presenting ours.

Bob, First I have to say that the Museum is in fact a nice facility. However, the real estate is not as free of encumbrances as you may think, due to local zoning requirements. Second, there have been ongoing discussions over many years by many Board Members on both sides regarding a merger. The club prefers a merger in which the membership has equity in the Museum and at the same time allows their Board to run it independently as subsidiary. That was not satisfactory to the Museum Board. Third, if you want a witch hunt then you'd better assume that none of us who volunteer at our expense to serve are looking out for the members interests...because all of our votes have been 100% unanimous. While you may be a cynic, I have to assume you know how hard it is to have 21 people support the same positions multiple times over several years....damned near impossible. Your club board has one thing in mind...the membership and our hobby. Lastly Bob, I am incredulous that you would have the temerity to call for the replacement of our Executive Director. Steve does a great job for the membership. He is in large part the reason your dues are way beyond cheap in this hobby...why?? because the guy works 12 hour days and weekends pouring over every last detail of the business side of this club as well as serving our membership. I don't know of ONE Executive Director who ever actually answers the phone at times....Steve does. Hes never too busy or too good to do anything,...even servicing the plumbing on occasion. You Sir are way out of line, particularly when you do not know that of which you speak. IF you want to talk, you can message me with your number, and I will call you at my earliest convenience and yours. Best, Tom P.S. Try being polite rather than calling people with whom you have no real familiarity by their last name. Your Executive Directors name is Steve!!

How right you are about that!! Thanks! We will keep pitching and hitting .

Thanks to all of you for the feedback ,and support/suggestions we have received from everyone publicly and privately. As I have said before, the learning curve in front of the camera was quick and steep. We definitely tried hard to improve with every segment. Anyhow, we appreciate your indulgence and will take the good with the bad, but appreciate the positive response we've received thus far regarding last nights episode. I know we wont make everyone happy all of the time, but we do want to earn your support through improvement. I have had quite a few inquiries about the club, so that is a positive.

I thought perhaps it might be helpful for me to comment on this, given that I could take constructive critique back to the producer, and also speak from a vantage point which is vastly different for obvious reasons. I have perused the forums regularly for years, but seldom got too much into the fray outside of pushing for action on Legislative issues affecting the hobby,...the main reason being that some of you guys seem to wake up on the wrong side of the bed too often and love to complain. Much of that contention is supported by the fact that none of you who are grousing the most have emailed once (I gave you my email) to make suggestions. Sorry, it is what it is, in my very humble opinion ; ) As to the comment above regarding episode 3 which states "few of the car displayed" were stock. I would point out that all of those cars are AACA eligible. I'm just sayin...... Frankly to my recollection, there are only two vehicles featured in the ​entire season which would not qualify to be shown in AACA if 25 years or older. ...and while I'm here, ; ) regarding Chris Ritters moniker of "Car Geek" . It is both an endearing as well as a positive statement about him and his level of experience and expertise. As a librarian with a Masters in Library Science Chris has earned the right to label himself as what modern interpretations of the word "geek" imply according to the latest Meriam Websters Dictionary; "an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity" . I don't think I could describe Ritter any better except to say that he is EXACTLY the type of person this hobby needs. So,...now that I have probably ruffled your feathers, I will close by saying that we all need to relax a bit, and try to enjoy each other while promoting the heck out of our hobby because if we do not do that in every possible way that is available to us, our cars will have no caretakers in the future who respect their history or heritage. That is the truth, ....or we can be cantankerous and scare off all the newcomers and young people rather than imparting valuable knowledge to them which is fast disappearing. "HEY YOU KIDS...GET OFF MY LAWN" sound familiar?? : ) Thankfully there has been a lot of very positive feedback about the show along with good suggestions.

Episodes are available through discoverygo.com on the morning after the initial showing of each episode. Thanks.