Long time 'Big Healey' racer, Ivan Lessner (L) is charged by Stanton Guy with the custodial responsibility for the Austin Healey Owners Club of Victoria (Australia) car badge donated to the VRCBC by Les Mathieson at the 2012 BCHMR. Ivan is also 'modelling' a 2012 Sandown Historics T-Shirt from Les. - VRCBC photo

Long time ‘Big Healey’ racer, Ivan Lessner (L) is charged by Stanton Guy with the custodial responsibility for the Austin Healey Owners Club of Victoria (Australia) car badge donated to the VRCBC by Les Mathieson at the 2012 BCHMR. Ivan is also ‘modeling’ a 2012 Sandown Historics T-Shirt from Les. – VRCBC photo

The VRCBC had some special visitors at our 2012 BC Historic Motor Races. Les Mathieson and his wife Zonda, Austin Healey enthusiasts from Victoria, Australia dropped by to cheer on our ‘Big Healey’ racers. They also presented the Club with an Austin Healey Owners Club of Victoria car badge. (Of course, they received a VRCBC car badge in exchange.)

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2013 REVS Champion, Paul Haym – Gerry Frechette photo

This year’s Annual Gala & Banquet was another great success with the usual potpourri of excellent food, ‘speeches’, serious (and not-so-serious) year-end awards, door prizes and dancing. Congratulations to Paul Haym, this year’s REVS Champ and to all of the other award recipients. We look forward to seeing everybody at the track in 2013.

A sampling of Gerry Frechette’s photos of the evening are shown below. You can check out all 150 of them at Gerry’s web site (here). Just click on the ‘Recent’ tab and look for the ‘VRCBC Awards Banquet’ album. Thanks Gerry and Sue.

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The VRCBC Vantage (2007 – 2012) Anthology is available in both hard cover (L) and soft cover (R) versions – T. Johnston photo

Just in time for your letters to Santa, Editor Tom Johnston has compiled an anthology of the seventeen (17!) VRCBC Vantage Newsletters from Summer 2007 to Autumn 2012. There are two versions; a soft cover version in black and white and a hard cover version in full colour.  Getting a copy couldn’t be easier. Go to the Vantage Newsletters page under the About VRCBC menu – or just click here – for the details.

 

The Money Shot – Brent Martin photo

Updated

The VRCBC’s November general meeting (Tuesday November 13th) was a very special one, particularly for all those who remember the Westwood Racing Circuit. The meeting was held at the Mark’s Auto Body (here) location in Port Coquitlam.

Many current Mission Raceway regulars will know Dino Milacic from his very fast peddling of the white MioDino Racing BMW 330i. Dino grew up going to Westwood however and although he was too young to have ever had a chance to race there, he has never forgotten it. Earlier this year Dino decided to permanently honour the memory of the track by turning one wall  (Yes, one whole wall!) of their PoCo shop into a Westwood mural. It’s all there – from the mountains in the distance, to the trees, grass, dirt and asphalt, plus the cars of course, in the foreground. And as a special bonus, the sky is blue and it can be guaranteed – for the first time ever – that it will never rain at this ‘Wetwood’!

After the regular meeting finished, there was a ‘formal’ ceremony to ‘unveil’ the mural. Guests are always welcome at VRCBC meetings and a lot of Westwood veterans joined us for this one. It was a great time and the VRCBC would really like to thank Dino and Bobby Milacic for hosting us. Check out the Mark’s Auto Body Facebook page (here) for more on the event.

Thanks to Brent Martin for providing us with all of these photos. He has more coming soon – check back.

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Editor in Chief Tom Johnston has just published the Autumn 2012 edition of Vantage – the VRCBC Newsletter. This time, Robin Fairservice tells the story of Elva Cars, which started as a very small specialist builder in the mid – 1950’s and eventually went on to build the excellent Courier and many successful sports racers. Mike Tate talks about meeting our special guest, Walter Wolf at the BCHMR. Tom Johnston tells the story of Port Moody’s IOCO Hill Climb. There are also two ‘you were there’ race reports: Tom describes his experience with his JM3 Formula Atlantic car at the ‘Monterey Historics’ in August and Madeline Wood describes her dad (Ian’s) weekend, which included a black flag(!) at the CSRG Charity Challenge at Sonoma Raceway in October.

You can find this edition and all of the previous Vantages under the About VRCBC menu, or download it directly by clicking here.