Exactly one year ago, I started this column off with the headline, “Welcome to 2020. It’s a new year and a new decade.” As we are all painfully aware, nothing in 2020 went the way we thought it would. So as far as I’m concerned 2021 is a 2020 do-over.
Welcome to 2021. It’s a new year and a restart for a [slightly used] new decade.
Not only have there been a number of changes to our lives in the last 12 months, both politically and socially, but there have been changes within CVR as well. Phil Capella now assumes the role of Past President, and former CVR Executive Vice President Allen Fossbender begins his 2-year term as CVR President. Allen’s monthly column Straightaway is debuting in this month’s Challenge and will be in a slightly different format than you’re used to seeing, reflecting Allen’s personality and style.
Shelley Krohnengold, CVR’s Editor of Challenge and my brother-from-another-mother (we were born 3 days apart) will take over as Club EVP during Allen’s term. Besides his duties as Club EVP, Shelley will continue his role as CVR’s unofficial Creative Director, working on branding materials, trophies, our spectacular calendar, the redesign of the CVR website, and everything in between. Other staff changes: Christine Beckwith assumes the role of Club Secretary from Joe Kunecki. Her husband (and Rally co-chair) Tim takes over as Treasurer from Don Phelan at the start of 2022, Deborah Cloud continues as Vice-Treasurer of Club Race, Maria Capella moves from being race volunteer coordinator to working with Deborah, and Linda Goodman takes over from Club Historian (and another past President) Prescott Kelly. And finally, former CVR member Frank Sena returns to the Club as the Social Media Chair. Look for his first column this month in Challenge.
Challenge itself will continue to grow. Last year, Challenge was read by just over 11,000 people. Over the course of the year, nearly 5,000 of those people came from our monthly emails, but almost 2,000 came from Google and many of those came to read our Feature articles and see our photo galleries. To continue fueling that growth, we’ll be adding some additional content to Challenge. First, we’re going to revive our long-dormant Technical column – I’m still working on a title – with articles from P-Car subject matter technical experts; we hope to add a Market Report column that talks about the current state of Porsche car collectability. We’ll be adding additional Photo and Video galleries to a section of the site that’s already quite successful and we hope to add a page with some background on CVR’s history over the years. Also on the list: articles on how to be a better photographer and a column called “Track Notes” with driver’s tips on driving other tracks.
It’s going to be a busy year. Make sure you download the Challenge app to your phone so you don’t miss any of it.
