All Change at the Top!

At yesterday's AGM, former Club Marketing Manager Tony Cottrell was elected to the Chairman's position within the club, taking over from Jeremy Blandford who retires after 6 years in the role.

The membership also voted to award Jeremy (seen here handing over to Tony) Honorary Life Membership of the TVRCC in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Club.

Other proposals approved by the membership yesterday included Mike Hardy taking over the IT Manager's portfolio, Pietro Abate who moves across to Special Projects and Ralph Dodds who moves back to the Public Relations/Marketing role to fill the gap created by Tony moving up to be Chairman.
 
The Club also took the opportunity to announce the award of annual trophies. First up was the Trevor Wilkinson Trophy, inaugurated and hand made by Trevor himself in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Trevcar Motors. It is awarded annually to the Club member who, in the opinion of the judges, has completed the most comprehensive restoration of a TVR in the previous 12 months. 

This year, there were three cars that could have won and these were narrowed down to two finalists, Dave Smith’s 3000M, fitted with a Cosworth 2.0litre engine, and Chris Womsley’s pre-cat Griffith. The work on both cars was superb, and the judging panel could not decide between the two, so it was taken to the full committee, where again following a vote the two cars were evenly matched at 4 votes each. And so it fell to the Chairman to apply his casting vote, which went to Dave Smith’s 2000M.

The second award was the Scott Moncrieff Trophy. This Trophy was inaugurated by the TVRCC in 1965 in honour of Bunty Scott Moncieff who was a key figure in the early days of TVR. He owned a Rolls Royce dealership in Staffordshire and in 1955 started selling TVRs. Three years later he was invited to join the board of directors in Blackpool and rapidly became intimately involved in the development of the Grantura, especially in motorsport where he and his wife Avril were amongst the first regular competitors in TVR motorsport in their brown Grantura Mk1, nicknamed the ’coffee bean’. In 1962, when TVR first appeared at Le Mans, the Scott Moncrieffs drove one of the support cars to the famous La Sarthe circuit. Bunty was also the TVRCC’s first president.

The trophy was traditionally awarded to the driver who won the most points in a single season of motorsport in a TVR and has some very famous names engraved around its base including Gerry Marshall, Tommy Entwistle, Rob Farmer and Paul Weldon. But in the mid-1990s, as a result of so many different series in which TVRs competed each with different points systems, the Committee decided to change the criteria, awarding it to the individual who has made the single greatest contribution to TVR motorsport during the year. For 2011, it was decided that there were so many people who had made outstanding contributions that it was unfair to single out any one individual and therefore it was decided to make it an award to all TVRCC competitors.

The final trophy was the Folkard Cup. Inaugurated in 2004 in recognition of the outstanding contribution made to the TVRCC by Roger and Carol Folkard, it is awarded annually to the Regional Organiser (RO) whom the Committee, in conjunction with Carol (Roger having sadly passed away after a long illness), feel has made the greatest contribution to the advancement of their region and the promotion of the TVRCC.

For 2011, there was one RO who stood out for his passion and determination, especially when he took over the running of not only his own region but also that of his neighbour when their RO stepped down. Alison Brown, our Club Administrator and Roger & Carol’s daughter, was therefore very pleased to award the Folkard Cup for 2011 to Herts/Beds/Middlesex RO Tim Payne.

---