Picture if you can a group of young men in from their late teens through their early 30’s, all share a love of hot rods, customs and drag racing. Some work part time jobs after school, some have new families and some are a living legend ala “John Milner”. They are always together so they decide to form a car club to share their interest, maybe get a club garage and build a club car, maybe a radical custom, maybe a gasser. They are always helping each other build their cars, loaning tools or giving a fellow member an unwanted but useful part. Everyone has a specialty, some are mechanics, some are body and paint guys, one guy builds hot motors and another is an “expert” at wiring cars. Whatever kind of help a member needs with his ride the person with that specialty will be there to help and will not ask for anything in return other than help when he needs it.
When I say these guys are together all the time I mean they hang out at the local diner or drive-in every night and go on runs or to the drags on weekends. This routine goes on for 20-25 years, 25-30 cars getting together to cruise to somewhere, a show in the next town or a large event hundreds of miles away, but they are together. Over the years people leave the club because of life situations or losing interest in hot rods but more people join, new people that have just discovered hot rods or are finally able to afford one. But slowly, going unnoticed, changes are happening. New members that join are older, not the teens and twenty-somethings that started the club long ago. Their cars are cars that they bought from someone else which is cool because cars have to be sold to someone but they never experienced the camaraderie of scrounging used parts and helping other members build their cars. All-nighters getting the car running hours or minutes before setting out on a run hundreds of miles away with no sleep.
More years pass and the club is now 30 or 40 years old with a handful of founding members still active. Many clubs started at around the same time have broken up but yours has survived. The average age of the club has risen maybe to the mid-50’s or slightly older. The older guys that have been in the club for many years lament the fact that unless the club gets some young blood in the club it and the hobby will be gone in several years. Older members are passing away or no longer can drive long distances. Sure new members are still joining but they’re in their 50’s or 60’s. What does the club do to get their children and grandchildren, legacies if you will, to join the club and give it new life? Members complain that nobody cruises in groups like they used to and when runs are being organized hardly anyone shows up. Members that experienced a line of 25 or more hot rods cruising single file down the interstate, an awesome site, try to tell those that never experienced it what it’s like, yet they don’t show up. There is still a core group of members that cruise to events near and far. Nothing like it, getting there and back is half the fun. A rolling car show, children and adults alike cooped up in carbon copy mini-vans and SUVs giving you the thumbs up as they pass or taking pictures of each hot rod as they pass it. The driver and passengers of the hot rods acknowledging with a wave and a smile that won’t leave until you get home knowing they are driving a unique one of a kind vehicle. But is getting those that haven’t been on a long distance run to do so enough to get new life into the club? It’s a start but everyone is still getting older and eventually, well you know.
How do you get younger people into the club? Your club has a specific cut-off date of model years but the kids are into “traditional” hot rods and customs that they believe is carrying on the way hot rodders were in the ‘50’s or into ‘60’s muscle cars. Talk to someone in that age group about joining your club filled with people old enough to be their grandparents and they’ll say why would we want to be around a group of grumpy old men that do nothing but sit in lawn chairs all day? They have a point whether club members want to admit it or not. Without new blood, the car club started 40 or 50 years ago will eventually die. But what to do?
Club members bring up changing the cut-off date to include newer cars but some of the grumpy old men fight it and defeat that notion. Now what? Nobody has any ideas, so the status quo goes on. Each day, the club like its aging members is one day closer to its demise.
Some members are trying to resurrect the idea of an increased cut-off date. Sons and daughters of members want to join but want to keep their ‘50’s and ‘60’s cars and eventually get older cars. Does the club start a later model division to let them get a foot in the door? Does it just raise the year cut-off? Or does it move slowly with ever tick of the clock (or change in the digital display) closer and closer to its death throes? The members need to decide. The club members have the fate of the club in their hands. Somewhere the gnarled hands of a stone carver are chipping away at a tombstone, the words forming; Your Car Club 1969-20--. When will it end? Can the end be stopped? That’s up to the members.
But for now, the members can help instill interest in their older cars by driving them, not just a couple of miles to a cruise night, but driving them. Driving them hundreds of miles to events. Get the cars on the back roads and on the interstates but drive them hard and far so people can see them in all their glory, doing what a hot rod was meant to do. Driving them, that’s what gets people interested and can also get the blood flowing again of a long time member who hasn’t been on the road in a while.
© Tony Halachoulis 2011
