South of the Rockies, and north of the border!!!
Prior to this role, I had no reason to ponder where the Rocky Mountains came to an end as you head south in the US. In 2017, when I took this zone rep “job”, I would not have guessed that a majority of the regions were not either east or west of those mountains, but instead, south of them. Now that I’ve flown over and driven around them, I get it.
This is the third in a series of three monthly letters which collectively highlight all of the geography in PCA’s zone 9. Our May letter highlighted the Front Range, east of the Rockies. June addressed my home geography west of the Rockies. This issue will introduce those of you not familiar, to our regions “south of the Rockies”.
Anyway, the four regions located “south of the Rockies” are Roadrunner, Carrera, Llano Estacado and West Texas. The largest among them is the Roadrunner region, with around 450 primary members. That’s just about the same as their neighboring Alpine region to the north. Likewise, neighboring Carrera and West Texas regions are just about in a dead heat when it comes to membership at 90 and 89 primary members respectively. Finally the Llano Estacado region based out of Amarillo, Texas is our beloved mini-region. Those of us “up north” might ask why the numbers drop off so much as we head south and east? There’s no big science to it. The most obvious is population. There are simply fewer potential owners. But you still have to have clubs close to the members. But beyond population, I’m certain that there are other contributing factors to the smaller club sizes. There are lots of “Porschey” things that you find a lot more of, in and around the larger Rocky mountain metro areas, that you don’t find as much of, in the more southern and eastern regions. Chief among these are Porsche dealers, race tracks, and an abundance of “Porsche roads”. Among these four regions, there was only ONE Porsche dealership until earlier this year with the opening of Porsche of El Paso. In terms of race tracks within the geographic boundaries, there are really only two available to the clubs among the four regions. Curvy Porsche roads? Well actually, there are lots of them, but they require significantly more straight-line driving to get to them from the location of the core membership in each region.
But the key point to illustrating these differences is to say that, based on my observations, members “south of the Rockies” have the same car culture enthusiasm, strong friendships, and every bit as much fun as their northern zone 9 counterparts. Carrera region puts on their Oktoberfiesta, a 3-day track, autocross and tour event through the mountains of Western New Mexico. If you haven’t been, I recommend it. The West Texas region’s holiday party is like none other in the zone. They combine it with a multi-day drive to get to some Porsche roads in the hills. This combined annual celebration seems to be at a new location each year. Is it possible to have too much fun??? As well, they just landed (pun intended) an even bigger autocross venue at a military airstrip. And they open their arms to other car clubs to join their events. Roadrunner region opens up their autocross events to lots of non-Porsches as well. And when it come to the percent of membership that attends socials, I have no doubt that the roadrunner region tops every other medium to large sized region in the zone. They are an engaged crowd. And as many know the Roadrunner region has been host to a last year’s national “Treffen Tamiya” and has hosted their own “Fiesta New Mexico” several dozen times. Finally, tiny, Llano Estacado region has weekly and monthly breakfast gatherings that are nothing less than their own local tradition. I’ve enjoyed getting to know lots of volunteers and leaders from these regions.
Rich Sanders
Zone 9 Rep
