Jaguar Club of Central Arizona combines the AGM and Western States into Super-event
by Mark Stephenson, AGM/WS2010 Co-chair

If you missed the 2003 Challenge Championship with its great social events, the 2005 where the new XK was unveiled for the first time in North America at the posh Chateau Elan, or the 2007 with the lap of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the slalom right next to Gasoline Alley, the team that put those events together has come out of retirement to double down on a double event -- the AGM and Western States 2012. This is your chance to experience what everyone raved about.

The time and place couldn't be better. March 6, 2012, when it feels like Winter will never end, rays of warmth will emanate from the Valley of the Sun and beckon all Jaguar owners to melt the icicles of cold, gray doldrums. It's an escape, a vacation, a chance to meet old friends and make new ones while experiencing the grandeur and history of last of the 48 contiguous states to be admitted to the union in its centennial year.

A year shy of its centennial is our host hotel, the oldest of the grand Arizona resorts, the San Marcos (www.sanmarcosresort.com). The rooms are magnificent and the location, just a few minutes from both Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and Mesa Gateway Airport makes an ideal base for exploring Arizona, even if you aren't bringing Jaguars or voting instructions from your club. If you are from the West or Midwest, check on booking your flight on Allegiant Air. They have incredibly low fares into Mesa-Gateway. San Marcos rooms are normally $189 in the high season, but we have negotiated an astonishingly low rate of $109 for the spacious standard rooms. (Mention "Jaguar Club" for discount.) Suites have similar discounts. Not only famous for the celebrities who have stayed there, the San Marcos boasts the oldest grass golf course in the state. It will be the site of the first AGM golf tournament. Make a Hole-in-One on the 147-yard unlucky 13th hole and you've won yourself a new Jaguar. But that's not the only driving you'll have a chance to do.

Tuesday, March 6, the two-day Ghost Town and Grand Canyon Tour opens the festivities. You may have driven to the Grand Canyon before but even if you live here, it's doubtful that you've gone via a ghost town, a collapsed mine, the old territorial capitol, and colorful places like Whiskey Row, the Flagstone Capitol of the World, and Route 66. Tourers will make their own hotel arrangements Wednesday night at the Frey Marcos Hotel in Williams, AZ, or elsewhere if they choose. If the group is smaller, we'll make eating decisions on the fly. Larger, and we'll set things up in advance. Hertz has a rental site at the San Marcos and we have negotiated special rates, so flying out won't prevent you from making the trip and rental will be far cheaper than at the airport. (Route may be adjusted depending on weather conditions.) E-mail Mark Stephenson, tour organizer, at agmws12@jcca.us for more information.

Thursday is Track Day. JCNA has some insurance issues with events at racing facilities, so this will be on your own. We have tentatively organized a couple events and feedback is most welcome. The Bondurant School of High Performance Driving (www.bondurant.com) is where the pros go to improve their skills. I've done a three-day course there and it was the most I've ever learned about something I thought I knew a lot about. This one-day course covers the same material, only quicker. I had a couple big aha moments before I ever got behind the wheel. You may have no intention of racing, but you will come out of the Intro to Racing Course, a much, much better street driver. Cost is $1375 (less 10% if we get more than 10). Avoid one accident, something I did about six months after my course, and you've paid for it in money, time, hassle, and injury. That evening you can practice your newly-learned skills in the 100 mph Bondurant Shifter Karts if the group is small, or single-speed, 50 mph Pro Karts if the group is larger than a dozen. Price depends on how many people we have and which karts we use. Both are a blast. Again, e-mail Mark Stephenson at agmws12@jcca.us with feedback and for complete details.

The aforementioned Golf Tournament will be a shotgun start on Friday morning followed by lunch. Relax, shop, whatever on Friday afternoon, then prepare to kick up your heels at the AGM Roundup Dinner at Rawhide Wild West Town (www.rawhide.com).

OK, sorry, on Saturday, if you're a delegate, you have to do some work. It's AGM day. The great news is that the AGM Banquet Saturday night marks the end of the AGM and the beginning of the Western States. With the overlap of the two events, we're expecting over 300 JCNA members, making it the largest gathering of its type in JCNA history (we believe). If you won a JCNA continental or regional award, show up because chances are you'll never receive as much adulation for your accomplishments as you will at this AGM banquet. We've kept the meal cost low and are losing money on every plate because we don't want the cost to prevent people from attending. Thank the sponsors for making this possible.

Sunday, it's all Western States with what we hope will be the largest display of Jaguars in one place in 2012. If you're a serious concours competitor, have your car judged. If you want to kick back, relax, talk to a few of the thousands of spectators and soak up some rays, just display your car. We don't care because we have an ulterior motive. Not only do we want to fill the site with Jaguars, but with sufficient sponsorship, we're making the concours a full Charity Event. Every Jaguar you show helps Jaguars in three ways. At least $25 of each Concours entry fee will be donated to the Northern Jaguar Project (www.northernjaguarproject.org). NJP is a Tucson-based organization that buys Jaguar habitat in northern Mexico. You may not know that Jaguars once roamed our area. Every few years, one is spotted this side of the border, a couple hundred miles away. On the NJP site, they have some incredible remote-camera photos of Jaguars and other indigenous creatures in their preserve just a hundred miles south of the border. McPherson College (www.mcpherson.edu) has the only four-year, accredited, auto restoration program in the country. They will receive at least $20 of the entry fee. The remaining $8, after the brunch cost, will go to ICAN (www.icanaz.org), a Chandler charity dedicated to providing after-school programs for at-risk youth. We'll invite them to the show, introduce to Jaguars and ask them to stream through the concours site after we're done to clean up. With your entries and additional donations on the entry form, we're creating a future for Jaguars, classic Jaguars, and Jaguar. So that you can claim the charitable donation deduction, we'll be including a letter listing each entrant's donations in your registration paperwork. The eventful day will end with us serenaded by the soothing acoustic strings of Mariachis at our Bajo las Estrellas de Sonora (Under the Sonora Stars) Dinner.

Monday we return to the road to experience the 5 C's of Arizona, Copper, Cattle, Cotton, Citrus, and Climate, along with some of the most rugged terrain in the Southwest, on the picturesque 5 C's Rally and Tour. We end the day with what I think will be the most memorable evening of the week as we relive the British Invasion. A live band will be playing the hits of the swingin' sixties from the Stones, the Turtles, Yardbirds, Peter and Gordon, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, and lots from the Beatles. I've heard the band covering the Beatles tunes and if you close your eyes, it could be a live performance from the Fab Four.

We're still behind the wheel Tuesday, for the fastest-growing event in JCNA competition -- the slalom. That night we close the week's festivities with the Western States 2012 Awards Banquet. It's more great food and wonderful company and we'll be handing out all the Meet Awards. It will be a relaxing night to look back upon the events of the week and plan to keep in touch with new friends, old friends, and show up at the next AGM, Challenge Championship, and Western States.

The Jaguar Club of Central Arizona hopes that our wide range of events will make this an unforgettable Jaguar Vacation. We have so much in store, consider it a cruise without the boat. One of the things I'm doing that I hope will contribute to the success of the event is organizing feeder routes from around the continent to the Valley of the Sun. I'm hoping I can find drivers in the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic States, the Intermountain West, the Heartland, the Pacific Northwest, California, and even the Upper Midwest and New England (despite yucky weather)... if I can find drivers in each of those areas to organize regional meeting points, and have those meeting points feed into major continental routes, meeting with other regional groups along the way, JCNA could have convoys of Jaguars converging on Phoenix. A pipe dream perhaps, but it could become a reality. Our club can get at least 35 Jaguars to the concours grounds. We have a commitment from Southwest Regional Director Tom Krefetz for an additional twenty cars, hopefully a bunch of those from Mexico City, because those guys are a hoot to party with.

I think we should be able to get, and I challenge the closer clubs and farther regions to get the following numbers of cars to the event:
Jaguar Club of Southern Arizona (an hour or so away): 10
Jaguar Club of Northern Arizona (a couple hours away): 7
Jaguar Owners Club: 10
Inland Empire Jaguar Club: 5
Jaguar Associate Group: 5
Rocky Mountain Jaguar Club: 5
Wasatch Mountain Jaguar Register: 4
Jaguar Owners Club of Oregon: 4
Washington and British Columbia Jaguar Clubs: 10 combined (with Art Dickenson's help)

At the 2003 Challenge Championship in Phoenix, the Texas and Oklahoma clubs were woefully underrepresented. If everything's BIG in Texas, it would be fantastic if you could generate a BIG turnout. Can you get ten Jaguars to the concours? I know there are some serious drivers in Florida and would love to see a five-car entourage pick up a JCNA member or two in Louisiana before meeting up with a huge Texas contingent.

Carolina drivers would pass through Atlanta. If we could get a couple intrepid souls from the "far East" maybe they could start a snowball that would gain a couple more from the North Georgia Jaguar Club and build momentum meeting up with a couple cars each from the Kansas City and St. Louis clubs and five from the Oklahoma clubs. If they all met at the I-10/I-20 junction in west Texas, we'd have about 30 Jaguars convoying toward Phoenix. That would be impressive.

I understand that we won't get more than two or three cars from the Northeast and North Central regions. It's a long drive and the weather could be lousy, but there are 22 clubs which is potentially 44 delegates. Why not drive? Yeah, it might take a little longer, but you avoid intrusive airport searches, lost luggage, missed connections, etc. and you'll have a really cool car to drive when you get to Arizona. We don't have a magazine called Arizona Highways because we have boring roads. If you're concerned about the weather, head south and meet the I-20 contingent.

I'm willing to coordinate all this, so if you have even the slightest inkling of an idea that you might possibly consider driving or trailering your Jaguar to the AGM / Western States contact me at agmws12@jcca.us. I'll get a contact list started so that people can contact each other and meet along the way. If you've never done an extended tour with a bunch of Jaguar people, it is one of the most fun experiences you can have. Just ask the folks who took the week-long Southwest Oil Leak tour this fall.

Add it all up, and you have over 140 Jaguars showing up for a week of incredible Jaguar fun in the Valley of the Sun. And won't you Northerners need a little sun by early March? Just think, when you depart March 14, spring will be days away.

See you in Phoenix.