I am honored and elated to have been asked to be the new editor of Classic BMW Motorräder Magazine.
I want to thank the Vintage Motorcycle Owners Club Board of Directors for their trust. Also, Darryl Richman--and all the past editors--for transforming what was once a humble black and white typed newsletter into a 40-page full-color magazine. And I want to thank all the club's members for making our club so enjoyable!
Looking forward, I'm elated to continue our club magazine as a reflection of who we are as a club, while at the same time transforming it into a world class destination for vintage BMW motorcycle fans. As editor, my goals are as follows:
- Publish regularly. We shall produce a minimum of four issues per year, but shall strive to print 5-6 issues per year to make up for the recent lapse.
- We shall continue to celebrate and rely on reader-submitted articles and photographs. We encourage all readers to submit Reader's Rides, Ride Reports, Event Reports, Project Reports, restoration and repair tech stories and photos. Regarding photography, we are going to step up our game and challenge all our club amateur and professional photographers alike to display their best vintage BMW-related photos. Want to get your photo on the cover of a worldwide magazine?! Please send your unpublished high resolution images to editor@vintagebmw.org.
- We will continue to enjoy essays by dedicated contributors like Alison Greene and Roland Slabon and....hopefully you! Do you have an idea for an article bouncing around in your head, or do you wish to pen a Letter to the Editor? Please DO submit your content to editor@vintagebmw.org. We value your ideas and submissions, even items that you might consider to be "unfinished".
I will be introducing several new departments which will appear in nearly every issue:
- Tech Talk - Get your technical questions answered by a "pro" mechanic.
- Product Review - Learn what products are great and not so great. We will review motorcycling products in general, such as gear, as well as vintage-specific parts and tools. And we are interested to know what you think. Have you tried and loved or hated a new product? Please submit your product review.
- BMW History - Interesting features about BMW corporate, dealer, club history as well as personal recollections about vintage BMW motorcycles and motorcycling.
- Reader's Rides - close-up inspection of drool-worthy machines. In the next issue--you do have a subscription, right??!--we discover Bob Alexander's K1, J.R.O. McIntyre's well-optioned R69S and Wayne Snider's fully restored R26.
- In the Workshop - Tune in as we visit the vintage BMW workshops of both professionals and hobbyists around the globe to see what they are repairing and restoring as well as learn about improvements they've made to their workshops, tools, techniques and machine shop machines. In the next issue, we will hear from Craig "Vech" Vechorik at Benchmark Works and Christopher Betjemann at Barrington Motorworks. (So click Subscribe already. What are you waiting for?!)
Let's all celebrate the return of Classic BMW Motorräder! I hope you are looking forward to hearing from us as much as we are looking forward to hearing from you.
All club members receive a subscription to Classic BMW Motorräder Magazine. The cost is just $30 per year in the USA, ($40 in Canada/Mexico and $50 in other parts of the world).
If you are not currently subscribed, you'd better hurry up and subscribe in the next 72 hours or you may miss the next issue!
Subscribe at http://vintagebmw.org
Warmly,
Scottie Sharpe
