We are trying to start a club here.We were wondering if anyone has had an experience with a Corvette Club. Are they good, bad or indifferent? What activities do you do? How many members on average? Any experiences you would like to share. Thanks for any input.

 

How many Vettes out there in Guam? I've been there twice and only counted five. Back to your question. I'm the VP of our local club and most of the activities we do are mystery dinner cruises (someone picks a place and doesn't tell anyone and you cruise until you get there), cruise ins to the different Sonic Drive Ins, and car shows especially Vette shows. We hold a monthly meeting. We have a little over 50 members at present with a few more in the wings. Our board consists of a President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, Competition Director (aka Events Coordinator), NCCC Governor, and Officer at Large ( the PR person). We all get along pretty well. Anytime you mix a group a people, you will get some squabbles - human nature. If the focus is on the car, the club can be very informative and enjoyable. If too much focus gets on the social, I've found them to develop too many cliques. Feel free to check us out at www.playgroundcorvetteclub.com Good luck.

 

I guess you might be wondering why 80 people have look at your post and only one has responded. Says alot for Corvette Clubs don't you think.

 

Maybe what it says is that not many people know how to start a Corvette club. They also may not have something constructive to say on the issue...

JCR_Indy

 

I belong to 2 clubs in NJ. We go to many car shows, we have several breakfast, luncheons and dinners that we all drive to. We meet once a month. The part of "some squabbles" are ussually maneageble. It is ussually a lot of fun and the more you do clubs/cars stuff the more fun it becomes. I write the monthly newsletter that gets mailed to all the members. We collect 30 a year for membership that is kept by the treasurer for club activities. good luck.
bye

 

Been in many... some have not been good experiences but on the whole I have enjoyed all of the clubs. As to the activities... well cruises to eat... autocross (my favorite) ... poker runs... weekend cruises... trips to special events... did I say cruises to eat... Car shows... parades....

 

I am about to start an NCCC branch here in Loudoun County Virginia, we are calling it the "Old Dominion Corvette Club". I am also a member of the Northern Virginia Corvette Club. I find clubs to be a great place to meet all sorts of people, share the common bond of Corvettes and if you don't get involved in politics, you can have a good time. I for one have had a terrific time with the NVCC, met some great people, and became a very active member. My reason for leaving the club was one of necessity. We have many Corvettes in Loudoun County (next County over from Fairfax) and there is a need to expand. So I have taken the role to do this, with the help of several other people in my local community and the NVCC who we will work with, to have a local Club.

Starting a club is like starting a business. You have to plan a business strategy, like: What is the purpose of the club, or the main focus ? What are the members interested in doing to keep the interest there? Now one thing that is importent to start is contact the NCCC as you become part of the overall organization and can be covered by a group event insurance, and they will send you a complete package to get the club off the ground. The second thing is try to find a Sponsor, like a dealership, that will provide some of the sead money to get the club off the ground.

It will take some work, and you might have to get yourself involved with politics to get the club going, but I happen to think they are work the time and trouble.

For the record, I have been involved with a Camaro club that was a real bad experience for me, and thought I would never ever join a club again. I am glad I did not take my own advice, as the NVCC is a great organization and they have many good people. Good Luck...

 

This is our clubs first year, and so far we are having a lot of fun (http://www.raceclub.info/). We have kept is simple to start, doing Drive and Dines and other low stress events. We are not sure what the future holds as far as other hosting other event types (shows, autox,etc), but for now we are getting good participation.

One critical decision we did make was to require that our members be part of the NCCC - we did this mainly for insurance coverage. With liability exposures the way they are today, we felt this was a necessary evil.

We have the basic officers (pres, VP, secretary, treasurer, NCCC Governor and an activities chairperson. We did incorporate as a non-profit business too.

 

What is NCCC?

 

I "belong" to an informal club - A.C.E. (Arizona Corvette Enthusiasts)
http://www.arizonavette.net/. I say informal club, becuase we have no dues, no officers, no regularly scheduled meetings, no "stinkin" badges . So you may wonder what makes this a club!

It's a loosely formed bunch of folks who love their Vettes of all vintages, and really don't want the formality of a traditional club. If one of the members has an idea for a cruise somewhere, or if he/she has a good cause to raise money for, a plan is formulated and then we go out together. It's actually fun, without some of the politics that can ruin the experience.

One of the guys - Bryan, is the "coordinator", he runs the web page that I mentioned previously and he kind of organizes some of the activities, and he was one of the founders - so he is kind of the de facto "president" if we really had one.

Personally, I'm not much of a joiner - but I really enjoy the looser format I've described and through A.C.E., I've met some real quality folks. Good luck!

Oh yeah - without the formality of the officers, etc., the club cannot be sanctioned by NCCC - National Council of Corvette Clubs.

 

National Council of Corvette Clubs. They cover your liability at events. Keeps your club members from getting sued. I think it's $30/year/member and is not mandatory to start a club.

 

Based on my experience I've found being in the local Corvette Club to be quite positive. Through the club, I've met other people who are as interested in the Corvette as I am. I find that it's a great place to learn about the namesake and quirks of the Corvette.

For me, what I enjoy most are participating in cruises and dinners, as well as the "shop night" which is offered to club members. "Shop Night" is a two hour period where the local dealership allows club members to use the service lifts for routine maintenance (oil changes, brakes, etc.). The dealership also has a service rep available to provide any technical advice or suggestions. While for simple/general maintenance only, "Shop night" has provided me with a little more knowledge of the mechanicals of the car.

When I looked for a club, I looked at two NCCC organizations: one was more focused on the competitive nature of belonging to the NCCC(earning points and competing through car shows, auto-x and other events), while the other seemed to be more laid back and casual. I must admit, for me the "Shop Night" was a BIG factor in my decision.

I suppose a clubs activities generally reflect the interests and natures of its members, so I'm sure your membership would certainly have an influence.

Best of luck...

 

I was a member of a small club here in Southern California. About 30 members total, but we usually only had about 15 or 20 members show up at any one time for our monthly meetings. Dues were $25 per year. We had a president, a V.P. and a secretary. One of our members was the owner of a popular local eatery, and he let us use his restaurant after hours in the evenings to hold our monthly meetings. As several other posts have mentioned, squabbles are inevitable among members, and we lost our meeting place when our host left the club after becoming upset with several other club members over some trivial matters.

We tried holding our meetings at several different local restaurants, but we were soon ousted when the managers of the restaurants discovered that we were not spending a whole lot of money in their establishments during, or after, our meetings. Finding a suitable place to meet after work in the early evenings was our biggest problem, and was never really resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

We mainly did the “Drive and Dines” for Sunday Brunch, and a few local parades. After a while we had a couple of outlaw bikers, who just happened to also own Corvettes, and were friends of existing members, start coming to our events and hanging out at the meetings. This obviously caused many members with families, including myself, to start intentionally missing the meetings and events. The membership started to decline rapidly at that point, and to my knowledge, the club ultimately disbanded for lack of members interested in continuing to attend our meeting and events.