Glen,
As a semi-"triumph owner" (hey, my driveline's TR6) watching from the sidelines, mind if I chime in? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
The problem as I see it is much as has been said by others: there is too much fragmentation. TRA for the TR2/TR3 guys, 6-Pack for the 250/6 owners, not to mention the plethora of local clubs. A centralized club can only scale so far before people fail to see the point of their money (ie TVRCCNA works as a central organization because there's "only" 400+ members IIRC, but how many thousand TR owners are there in the US).
Now, what if the VTR went back to its roots as a repository. Follow the model of
UFWDA in the Offroading community. VTR would sit as a national coordinator/repository above the local clubs. Clubs like Delaware Valley Triumphs could elect to join, and if they do then $5 (or $10 or whatever) of each members dues would be sent to VTR, which provides a central repository for information, legislation, or whatever. The club memberships do not eliminate individual memberships for those who are not members of clubs, but they allow a wider variety of people to become involved.
Another thought on the lines of providing value to the membership is for VTR to become involved in more events than just the convention. For example, TVRCCNA is broken into regions. Many members can not make it to our national meeting in NJ amd thus lose interest in the club or question its value. To combat this we have discussed the addition of regional events where a TVRCCNA Region would ally with a local show (such as possibly The Original British Car Day for the Mid-Atlantic region) where in addition to the standard show the TVRCCNA Region would sponsor awards for TVRs. This model is used successfully by the North American Spitfire Squadron (NASS) which held a show in conjunction with the Indy british car show in Brownsburg, IN last year. There were almost as many spitfires/GT6's as other british cars and it drew a lot of attention to NASS as well as helping publicise the show.
Echoing the sentiments of others, the closing of the technical articles was rather upsetting for me as well. As I've said in other posts here, I'm a TVRCCNA member. The articles were helpful, but not necessary. I might consider paying $5-10 for article access as an "Affiliate" instead of a "Member" if new articles were being written, but a full membership is kind of pointless for me, especially since I can't even tell if I would be welcome at VTR 2005. One option that might be considered would be cross-licensing articles with other clubs. For example, TVRCCNA will be launching their new site soon which will have a members-only section that may include some articles (the webmaster is still figuring out the capabilities of our new host and what the members want). If it does have articles VTR could agree to trade access with clubs like TVRCCNA or 6-Pack that also provide information that may be of interest to its members.
Basically, to sum up my haphazard thought train: The collector car hobby does not seem to lend itself well to a centralized national organization since the popularity explosion of the internet. Clubs like VTR (and TVRCCNA) need to work hard to come up with value for their membership, and one way to do that may be to decrease operating costs (by decentralizing into supporting a local club) and accordingly decrease income such that the value to the enthusiast increases.
Hi Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
