November/December

[Anonymous]

@Den Hewitt wrote:

I sent an email early this year offering my 1949 RHD Paris built Legere for the NEC stand.

I did not even get an acknowledgement saying “thank you we shall bear it in mind”.

I think that says a lot.

Hi Den. Who did you send it to?

[Anonymous]

@TOC Editor wrote:

Hi All.

I’ve done the NEC for five years now and my own observation is that it’s the cars that draw people onto the stand. If you watch people wandering around, you see them suddenly spot the cars and then come straight over for a closer look. The big draw this year was Martin de Little’s rear wheel drive Citroen. I saw more people go straight to this than all the Tractions. But the Tractions drew in a lot of people too. So, it’s not clear to me that the ‘quality’ of our stand makes a lot of difference (which is not the same as saying we shouldn’t try to make the stand look good).

Finally, as other people have said here, if anyone’s unhappy with the stand then the answer is to try to get more involved next year. But, at the end of the day, I think any criticism is very useful, so please keep giving your opinions. I’ll certainly print any relevant letters in FP.

Ed.

I called at the NEC stand and generally everyone seemed very busy and the stand looked good and was well up there with many of the other club efforts in the show.
In terms of costs, the actual space is free, but there is, I assume, like the Manchester Show, a charge for electricity, carpets etc, if you opt for those. At Manchester, we didn’t buy any extras from the organisers and our only costs on the day were some cable ties and some tape, which we didn’t feel inclined to charge to the club coffers. Obviously there is a cost to the club for the backdrop and its support framework, but we managed by means of a relay up and down the country, to transport those at no additional cost either.
I was at the NEC on Saturday (with my son, who is a fellow enthusiast) I chatted to Steve Wright for a few minutes, but then felt that it was more important for those manning the stand to get on and mingle with the visitors, rather than go on and make a nuisance of myself, so I left them to it. I did also enjoy looking at the rear wheel drive Citroen, incidentally.
When manning a stand it is not always easy to spot who wants to talk and who wants to be left to browse, as Bob says, it’s just necessary to be alert and to be ready to respond to anyone who shows an interest. My first encounter ‘close to’ with a Traction, was at the one of first Manchester Classic Car Shows. I think that it was on the Citroen Club stand and the owner very kindly answered all my daft questions and let me sit inside it. It took me another year to find a car, but that contact was an essential point in the transition from pipe dream to reality in terms of Traction ownership. I haven’t seen any Tractions at shows since that, which were not on a TOC stand, so if we were to drop either Manchester or the NEC, then I think that our opportunities for refreshing the club would be severely reduced.
We were late in the day at Manchester, and things were a bit touch and go as to whether we had a space, but the Citroen Owners had kindly suggested that had we struggled, then they would have been glad to give us a corner of their stand.

[Anonymous]

@TOC Editor wrote:

Hi All.

In no particular order (and I’m sure I will forget some of the comments I meant to pick up on), here are some ‘observations’….. I think Baz is perfectly within his rights to comment on the lack of attention he received on his second visit to the NEC stand. One of the things the club ‘management’ is trying to do is to get honest comments from members. I get the feeling, while chatting over a pint, that sometimes there is an air of “I’ll get this off my chest now, while we’re at the bar, but there’s no point grumbling to the club as nothing will happen”. I’m convinced that’s not true. At this year’s AGM Cleve effectively said “Tell us your thoughts, good and bad” and that meant the meeting lasted about one hour forty minutes. There’s little point in having ‘open meetings’ if no one is going to say a dicky bird. When the Club Spares thing was going on, one member told me a long story over a pint (or two..) about ordering a part from club spares and it didn’t fit (of course the blow-by-blow account took a lot longer to tell than that). I waited for him to run out of steam and then asked whether he’d told anyone ‘in authority’ about this, as the club was trying to find out what was true and what was ‘legend’ regarding problems with spares. His reply? “Well, you know me Bob, I don’t like to make a fuss”. Well, that was bloody helpful then!

I agree with Baz (having spent time on the NEC stand over the past few years), that sometimes it reminds me of a private club and I do get ‘twitchy’ when I see stand ‘staff’ deep in conversation with each other. One of my many incarnations as a youth was as assistant bar manager in a disreputable drinking club (they’ve all gone out of business now we have 24 hour licensing 😀 ) The first thing I was told was ‘keep your eyes open even when you’re re-stacking the shelf. The job is to serve people, even if you’re in the middle of something else’. So, I can chat to other members while on the NEC stand while keeping my eye out for visitors who may want a bit of information. Unfortunately, I agree with Baz, that many well-meaning members who man (and ‘woman’) the stand don’t seem to have this skill and it ‘does my head in’ to watch visitors giving the so-called buying signal, and our lot are all nattering amongst themselves.

On that subject, I thought the NEC on Friday (the day I did stand duty) was very good for visitors. I personally gave out two or three membership leaflets and someone else told me he’d given out four or five. The problem we have is that we have no way of tracking whether people join later as a result of the NEC, other than the anecdotal evidence. John Oates tells me there is no logic to how the membership applications come in. I think he said he suddenly had five in a week, but there was no tie-in with anything that he was aware of.

Regarding the two topics of how much money the club has in reserve and the quality of the NEC stand, this is quite interesting. The NEC costs the club a fair amount of money each year. As far as I know, the stand is ‘free’ but the materials we put on the stand cost money and, where vehicles have to be trailered to the NEC, the club pays for trailer hire. The club also has to fund ‘the organiser’ staying in a hotel for three or four nights. There are two different trains of thought in conflict here. Those who say the club holds too much money in reserve will be happy that the club uses some of that money to cover costs like the NEC, while those who question the value of the NEC stand will point to the cost of the stand as one reason why we should stop doing it every year. The balancing act that ‘the management’ have to achieve is to have a reasonable stand background, while not spending a fortune making a new backdrop every year. I noted that this year’s backdrop was cobbled together from the materials we used last year. So, I guess this is an unwinnable discussion.

I’ve done the NEC for five years now and my own observation is that it’s the cars that draw people onto the stand. If you watch people wandering around, you see them suddenly spot the cars and then come straight over for a closer look. The big draw this year was Martin de Little’s rear wheel drive Citroen. I saw more people go straight to this than all the Tractions. But the Tractions drew in a lot of people too. So, it’s not clear to me that the ‘quality’ of our stand makes a lot of difference (which is not the same as saying we shouldn’t try to make the stand look good).

Finally, as other people have said here, if anyone’s unhappy with the stand then the answer is to try to get more involved next year. But, at the end of the day, I think any criticism is very useful, so please keep giving your opinions. I’ll certainly print any relevant letters in FP.

Ed.

Thanks for the replies. I am willing to help next year and I think I can get some help on designing a stand if it would help. I really am not knocking anyone but unless people make their feelings known those running the show have no idea there is a problem. I saw people complaining about spares but I cannot see how unless everyone knows there is a problem it will never get solved. Chris and his wife do a sterling job and perhaps some others should get involved in helping with sourcing and quality control. It is our club and I know I am a new member but unless we all help and encourage those who put in many hours, days or weeks to make the club a success they will lose heart and stop.
The club needs to be more web wise to try and get younger people. I was on the Ford stand and talking to a young guy about the MK1 Escort Mexico on the stand. Valued at around £45,000 he was saying how classic cars were out of his reach. I explained the rough costs of Tractions and he was amazed. We need to get these people.

[Anonymous]

@bazessex wrote:

Thanks for the replies. I am willing to help next year and I think I can get some help on designing a stand if it would help. I really am not knocking anyone but unless people make their feelings known those running the show have no idea there is a problem. I saw people complaining about spares but I cannot see how unless everyone knows there is a problem it will never get solved. Chris and his wife do a sterling job and perhaps some others should get involved in helping with sourcing and quality control. It is our club and I know I am a new member but unless we all help and encourage those who put in many hours, days or weeks to make the club a success they will lose heart and stop.
The club needs to be more web wise to try and get younger people. I was on the Ford stand and talking to a young guy about the MK1 Escort Mexico on the stand. Valued at around £45,000 he was saying how classic cars were out of his reach. I explained the rough costs of Tractions and he was amazed. We need to get these people.

I agree about the price thing Baz. The people I gave joining-up leaflets to were all struck by the price of Tractions. One chap opened the subject by saying: “Yes, but when you look at these cars they must be… well, quite expensive”. When I told him the average prices for Tractions his eyebrows shot up and I could see the cogs whirring. That’s when he said “Can you let me have some club information?”.

Ed.

[Anonymous]

When I was looking I was surprised at the prices cars were going for. Of course I saw cars in mint condition for more than I wanted to pay but I found a decent car for reasonable money fairly easily.
I did find the fact that gaining information from the club was difficult unless you were a member, that would put some people off. I was lucky that I had a friend on FB who has Afghan Hounds like us and she had mentioned the Traction in the past. I contacted Pat Defelice and spoke with Paul her husband who then invited us over and helped me so much. Paul actually came with me to check over the car I had bought and helped me get it home. To be honest without his help in explaining the cars and all the help given so far I would have probably given up.

[Anonymous]

An interesting comment Baz. I just had a look at the front page of our web site and perhaps we should have a FAQ for non-members who are thinking of joining. I’ll ask the web master what he thinks.

[Anonymous]

I actually found Tractions on FB first. I understand some members are against non members gaining access to the forum but I would have thought maybe a limited time or even a read only account would give possible new members more of a insight to the club. I read that the last AGM had a very low turnout is that because people cannot be bothered or is it due to a ageing membership?

[Anonymous]

To me, an AGM always sounds like a stuffy affair and why would you travel to a meeting to hear that everyone agrees with the finances, votes in the old committee and then has a sherry and goes home (this is my view in general not for the TOC as I have never been). The French ones I go to also have a 30 minute thank you speech from the local mayor, wow!, that is fun.

So I go back to my point of joining up the AGM with some other event that would attract people. Something worth travelling for. You then get the best of both worlds and the AGM benefits from more members giving their views.

The Facebook page is great but it needs to show the face of the club – I have posted a few things but if you made it a group it would allow a little more banter on there. In fact the 2CV group is taking over from their Forum a little as the majority of people check FB each day, they then start to answer a lot of the technical questions and others chip in and a discussion ensure, near enough real time. Also events are more easily dealt with allowing people to indicate their intentions to go, not go or sitting on the fence.

This Forum should be open to all with just an indicator to who is a club member. I am a member of TU (forum open with coloured flag indicating members) and the UK Renault Classic Car Club (forum open with a star indicating members). Since I have been into Classic Cars, the first thing I do when I see a different model on Le Bon Coin is search for the appropriate forum – if I know there is help and info out there, I will go ahead and buy the car. (With the Traction it was different as I was given it and this forum did not exist then, so used the TU forum at that time).

We need more and more sources of technical wizards on this forum as most people are answering their own questions or tangent discussions start drifting off into zero conclusion. Example of a great forum – My son has an austin mini – he has an issue in the garage, “how do I swivel the bottle brick over the nobby grok” – he posts it up on the forum and within an hour he has several answers to the problem and he tries it and comes backs, “thank you so much everyone”. That is how the forum works for me (does not have to be that quick but you get my drift).

So in summary;
1. Join AGM to another event (possibly NEC)
2. Make Facebook page a group and encourage members to join (open group)
3. Make the forum open to all and encourage new technical gurus (if not it will diminish like the AGM numbers)

😀

[Anonymous]

For me Facebook is a social networking site. If you give technical support and answer questions those quickly disappear off the screen to be never read again and groups tend to be made up of ‘younger’ people.

With a Technical ‘forum’ you can have detailed technical questions and answers which are readily (or should be) found and can be bookmarked, printed etc. plus you can have lot’s of images to show what is being done and how. For me that is the way to go but leaving all the old ‘Tech Talk’ archive in place (though some is outdated)

There is a place for both FB and a support forum, however the number of people I talk to in the local Classic Club I am in with 800 members who say ‘I don’t do Facebook’ but who do read and post on forums form a very high percentage. Most posting on a single marque support forum for their particular car though, not the Clubs own forum……

[Anonymous]

Regarding AGMs, it is difficult for a variety of reasons. I speak as someone who has only been a club member for five years, but I do speak to ‘the management’ quite a lot and have heard the issues rehearsed a lot. One matter that we tend not to dwell on, as it can sound a bit ‘us and them’ is that there is a geographical skew towards the South in terms of where the members live. So, do you hold the AGM in, say, Manchester in order to show that we are not South-centric, only to find that even less people turn up than normal (whatever that is). I agree that people tend to think what’s the point in going along to some stuffy meeting where we will all agree with each other and waste half a day (or more, given travelling time). But this year’s AGM was really different.

Cleve got through all the b******s quite quickly and then opened the meeting up for comments, questions, suggestions. It went on for nearly two hours and I’d say the formal bit took up thirty minutes at most. There was a lot of good debating and, if you’ve read the latest FP, I took away the fact that the members who were there said they are comfortable with using the web and suggested that it’s ‘safe’ to put more stuff up on our site instead of in FP. That’s why I kicked off the TOC Tech articles going onto the web site from now on. In fact, this weekend I’m hoping to get more of them off to Mick P and to advise which new ones are up there in the next FP.

Assuming the AGM stays as open as this in future, it will allow me to get on with modernising the way we communicate with each other. Up until now I’ve been ‘advised’ that there are still a lot of older members who refuse to use the internet, so I had to make sure no one was ‘left behind’, which meant everything had to go through FP. But, the members at the AGM said, just get on with it. So, as far as I’m concerned, if you don’t turn up at the AGM and make your point(s) then whatever is decided there is what we’ll do. We also have to remember that many members are also members of other clubs (not necessarily car clubs) and they may be active in those, more than they are in the TOC.

I’m a member of several clubs, but I’m just a passenger and don’t go to AGMs, as I’m already committed to an active membership of the TOC. But, at the end of the day, there’s no escaping the fact that we have approximately 5% of members (10% if you include members like us who live all over the place, including France, but do take part via the web) who take an active role in the club and the rest just nod along. Maybe this is the norm? No one collects this data, so there are probably little clubs all over the UK with the same ratio of active to passive members?

[Anonymous]

@TOC Editor wrote:

I’m a member of several clubs, but I’m just a passenger and don’t go to AGMs, as I’m already committed to an active membership of the TOC. But, at the end of the day, there’s no escaping the fact that we have approximately 5% of members (10% if you include members like us who live all over the place, including France, but do take part via the web) who take an active role in the club and the rest just nod along. Maybe this is the norm? No one collects this data, so there are probably little clubs all over the UK with the same ratio of active to passive members?

5-10% sounds about right Bob looking at the local Classic Club I belong to (and even fewer use the web site that I maintain for them)

[Anonymous]

It is a shame that some dismiss the internet – I had this problem with my parents 25 years ago. They said they were to old for computers and that they wouldn’t touch them. Since then they have stuck by that missing out on our kids growing up, photos, chat etc etc due to us always living abroad. Last time they saw our kids they were still at primary school.

So just having a dismissive attitude to the internet is no excuse at all – as they say F%*k ’em and lets get on with it.

Stick the AGM next to the NEC and I will be there… for sure 🙂

[Anonymous]

I doubt this will reach the forum since someone is removing posts from this forum. What right do you have whoever you are to do this? Who gave you the right? Why not be a man and own up to who you are and who is controlling you. The next meeting will be attended by me to raise this in person. I have never known this in any club I have ever belonged to.

[Anonymous]

Having recently taken over admin of this forum I am hoping that we can get the forum back on track ie “This is a forum for Members of the Traction Owners Club to share and discuss information regarding their cars.” To date I have only deleted 2 posts and 1 topic all due to being considered offensive and against the purpose of the forum. All other removed posts and topics have been done by the originators. Nobody has been “banned” from this forum but as you will see from the banner on this page it is a forum for TOC members only. I am “controlled” by nobody but am answerable to the committee, of which I am a member, and hence ultimately to the Directors and members of the TOC.

[Anonymous]

Admin1, may I ask who you are i.e. your name?

[Author]

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