BMW Associates, Spartanburg, South Carolina

c/o Kenn Sparks                                                                                  July 3, 2008

Manager, BMW Corporate Communications

To all our friends at BMW,

It is with sadness and appreciation that we write this letter from the West Coast to all the Associates of BMW Manufacturing in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The sadness arises from the fact that this will be the last time to bring our Roadsters “officially” home. But our appreciation for the past 11 years overshadows our sadness.  Since 1997, BMW Spartanburg has opened their doors and wined and dined us every Labor Day weekend. It had become a tradition that we looked forward to each year and agonized over how we could justify the time for the 7000+ mile round trip.  We managed to work it out and keep our spouses from being “ex’s”.

Lifelong friendships from all over the United States have been established with some purely by accident.  We reminisce over the many different people we met and funny incidents that we experienced in traversing this great country of ours. When we stopped for the night it was really the beginning, as we still had to put together the day’s pictures and prose for the website posting.  We were surprised at the number of non Z Bimmerphiles that followed our daily progress. In August and September of 2007 the website had as high as 150,000+ visits for the two months!  We don’t always come home with what we start with.  On two occasions Tom bought new Z’s, an MZ3 and MZ4, on the return drive.  The trips also allowed us meet local law enforcement officers and support their charities in several states.  Why in Minnesota alone we gave nearly $500 to help support highway aircraft patrols.

With all that has happened over the many weeks and the tens of thousands of miles traveled, we have no regrets.  We have found that the BMW Z series are great cars, but it is really all about the people who own them!  We can never repay BMW for all they have done for us as a group……  So once again we say a HUGE thank you BMW for the memories.

Blaine “Z3BigDaddy” Clark

“Tahoe” Tom Hansen