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Greetings Fellow Wisconsin Healey Club Members, 

Whew!!!  Congratulations on hosting the most epic Healey event in recent memory!  Conclave '24 will go down as one of the best conclaves in the history of the Austin Healey Club of America and has become the new benchmark for future events.  We hosted nearly 500 Healey faithful from all across America, Canada, the UK, and Australia. This incredible turnout produced well over 200 beautiful Healeys making our event the talk of Sheboygan County.  Downtown Elkhart Lake came alive with the rumble of several hundred gorgeous Healeys during our car show, the largest ever held on the historic streets.  Attendees were treated to a day at the country's premier racetrack, Road America where everyone was able to spend the day enjoying the funkhana, gymkhana, and a touring session on the fabled racetrack.  Our gymkhana on the Road America Motorplex go-kart track has been described as the very best gymkhana ever organized.  Everyone was able to flashback to the early days of road racing in Elkhart Lake when we drove the original 6-1/2-mile road course that started the motorsports tradition.

Our host hotel, the beautiful Blue Harbor Resort located on the shore of Lake Michigan was a total sell out.  It was the headquarters for many activities throughout the week.  From dinners and a place to catch up with old friends and create new ones, to tech sessions, trivia contests, rocker cover races, and even a mini golf tournament, Blue Harbor was a busy place! Spending time at the resort, you would surely run into many dignitaries roaming the halls.  John Colgate, factory Healey driver who raced during the 1960's at LeMans, Sebring, Nassau and many other racetracks in Healey works Sprites was in attendance. You would have probably bumped into Former F1, Indycar, Sportscar driver and longtime F1 color commentator David Hobbs. The whole clan from Bill Rawles Classic Cars in the UK were taking part in nearly every event all week and were a pleasure to get to know.  Healey luminary and author Roger Moment also spent the week at conclave.  And our sponsor AH Spares brought over the big guns from England when John, Jon, and Rebecca showed up with an extensive display. They were a blast to hang out with and were a wealth of knowledge about all things having to do with Healey parts and accessories.

If all of this wasn't enough, we helped organize a little something extra for our guests at Road America on the days prior to Conclave '24.  In collaboration with the Vintage Sportscar Drivers Association, we hosted the Healey World Challenge event as part of the Ariens Art on Wheels vintage race weekend.  Over 125 street Healeys arrived to take part in the weekend activities and were treated like VIP's during the event.  The highlight of the weekend were the Healey only races on both Saturday and Sunday featuring nearly 50 cars making the event one of the largest Healey race weekends in history.  It was the perfect primer for an incredible conclave week.

So, if you missed out on this event you will have to experience it vicariously through the many club friends that were there. Surely this week of all things Healey will be talked about for years to come.  I have spoken to many folks from outside our club that attended Conclave '24 and the Healey World Challenge events and they can't stop gushing about what an incredible event we put on.  The accommodations were perfect, the events were all memorable, and even the weather couldn't have been better.  Be proud, we earned it!

Cheers,

Mike Swanger