Straight Talk November/December 2025
Straight Talk from the “Mann” Cave
Bruce Mann
Well, here we are another year gone by. As some say, another trip around the sun. Hard to believe I have been at this now for over two years. It went by in a blink. We have had a lot of changes in that two-year period. Organizationally, Strategically, tactically, and most of all changes that were required to get us positioned for the next few years.
The board structure has certainly changed with, Dean Hickenlooper as the vice chairman, Dan Suter, our new communications manager, and Larry Pittman our sixth man in an advisor role.
In the staff roles, we added Theresa Gaffney as our document control person, and Jay Edel as our advertising lead. Last and certainly not least, we added our editor for the year 2025 Reid Trummel to put together our magazine. Unfortunately, Reid has fulfilled his commitment for one year and will be leaving the editor’s job to us. We thank Reid, who did an outstanding job with the magazine during this transition period.
With Reid’s time running out, you may remember in one of my previous articles I discussed as of the first of the year we would not have an editor dedicated to the magazine. We will be using a hybrid organizational structure (Next Generation) so to speak to enable us to continue the MGA! magazine as we have done for so many years.
Many of the staff and board have been involved in writing articles, proof reading and editing our magazines. Now we also will be collecting articles, pictures and advertisements from our membership base and all the advertisers who support MGA! and then sending them to a coordinator or a collection person(s) for additional refinement. Once that work is completed, proofreading and editing will commence and once finalized it will go to our printer for printing and distribution. Please bear with us during this transition. We will do our best but could use some help.
Please submit your articles and pictures to copyeditor@namgar.com and we will take it from there. This process will go on until we are able to find a full-time editor. If any of the membership would like to volunteer for any portion of this hybrid or next generation way of doing our magazine, please let us know.
Some other major milestones were that NAMGAR rejoined the North American Council of MG registers, effective Jan 1, 2025. We celebrated our 50th GT in Traverse City, MI in June of this year, while we supported a couple of NAMGAR regionals throughout the year.
The North American MG Council and especially NAMGAR is pleased to announce that we are holding our MG International 2026 event in Sandusky, Ohio at the Kalahari Resort. The event will be held on August 24-27 very near to Cedar Point on Lake Erie, which is a short ferry ride to the islands of Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island, and Kelly’s Island. Taking your MGA along is also a fun thing to on the ferry.
This event will be NAMGAR’s GT-51 and will have its own NAMGAR banquet dinner and be a part of all MG awards banquet. The car show will be combined with all the registers and be held just a couple of miles from the hotel. The car show will be moved from its traditional Thursday to a Wednesday venue.
We are contemplating a hospitality suite like NAMGAR has done at most of its GTs in the past. We are hoping that the rest of the registers will participate in supporting the hospitality idea as this has been a staple for NAMGAR at most GTs. This will feel more like a GT than in the past with many events that we are used to experiencing. It will be bigger, however.
Looking ahead into 2026, the vision is clear, we need to begin working on increasing our membership by attracting our next generation of MGA enthusiasts. We have laid some preliminary groundwork but nothing that has produced any tangible results. We hold very steady with about 1700 total members.
We need a full court press on this activity by our board and staff, through better communication both on our website and MGA!, as well as on our social media platforms. When we are at other MG venues it would be a welcome format that we pass out an application form with contact info that we can give to other non NAMGAR members. We will draft that up and I am asking Larry Pittman to assist with that activity.
I have tried to contact McPhearson College, who has a terrific program geared towards what our generation can relate to with what most of us would call shop back in our high school days. McPhearson’s program is a nationally recognized auto restoration program teaching young people how to do maintenance on all types of vehicles as well as perform restorations. If any of us out there have ties to this college, please let any of our board and staff members know.
Our goal is to discuss how we could help them as well as how McPhearson could help NAMGAR.
Happy Holidays from NAMGAR’s board and staff. Safe Travels and best wishes for a new year.
Remember
The road to success is always under construction!
