The Midland Section of the BMW Club was started because the only two members living in Leicestershire, Ken Vogl and myself (Ken Wells), were finding the trip down to Putney, for Club nights, a bit of a bind, particularly in he winter - no M1 then!

There were plenty of owners in the Midlands but none were prepared to travel that far for meetings, however, they were prepared to join the Club if they had a local meeting place. The Club committee were not convinced that starting a meeting outside of the London area was either feasible or necessary but after some discussion, decided to allow us to hold a meeting and if we could find fifteen members, we could form a Section. A member living in Kegworth owned the Anchor Public House and kindly suggested that we should hold the meeting on his premises; and so, on a Sunday in October 1961, the meeting went ahead. I don't think Kegworth had ever seen so many BMW's, because, beside the owners who were not yet members, most of the existing members were sympathetic to what we were trying to do and thought the committee were being unfair in requiring us to find fifteen members, so they too, had turned up to give the new crowd their support.

With this kind of support, the committee gave in, however, word had gone around and at the final count, there were enough members and prospective members to exceed the fifteen required and the Section was started with the committee's blessing. It was decided there and then that we would meet at the The Anchor Inn on the second Sunday of the month which would enable everyone to receive their magazine which came out at the beginning of the month. 

Within months of this, Clarrie Williams had formed the Western Section.

The Midlands went from strength to strength, gathering more and more owners from the North of the country and eventually, we were approached by members living further North who wanted to form their own Section; and so the Northern Section came into being followed shortly after by the Yorkshire Section. Both these Sections were formed by some of the keenest Midland members but strangely it did not seem to effect the Midland membership figures.

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In the years that followed, under Ken's control and guidance ,the Section flourished and became one of the biggest and most active Sections of the BMW Club, reaching a membership total of around 600 and then in 1992 some Section members from the West Midlands area split to form what is now the Mercia Section and reduced our membership to around 400. Ken continued as Section Secretary until October 1992  when the reins were passed to new volunteer. Ken is still active in motorcycling circles and continues to help us all as the Midland Regional Chairman of the BMF.