Club History

Gearheads…The Beginning

by Founding Member
Jim Bosteter   

I’ve talked to a few of the guys and as best we remember it was January of 1990.  There were about seven of us hanging out in Joe’s new garage, checking out his ’33 Chevy Pickup.  What a great place!  Joe was between wives, so he had turned his front yard into an oversized 2-car garage and his driveway was long enough to do a great burnout. 

The primary connection for this group was the addition to cars.  It went from Bob Abel, who owned several cars, including a Cobra and the “Night Witch,” a magazine–featured Model “A”, to myself, working on a home-built F100 Pickup.  The conversation, which consisted primarily of lies, exaggerations, and wishful thinking, came around to the topic of car clubs.  All of us had, in the past, or currently belonged to some sort of club.  You know the list: the pre ’49 club, the convertible club, the Ford Club, etc.    

We were able to agree that we liked to get together, talk about cars, and see what the other guys were working on.  But we did not care for the formal meetings with a set of rules, official political structure, and half the time spent talking about who’s running for office, what kind of food to bring to the picnic, and what the minimum standards were for a person’s car to qualify as a member of that club.  

It was decided that we didn’t need any rules--just a group of guys who loved cars.  One’s they had fun with and were American-made: Hot rods, customs--whatever.  Drive it, race it, polish it, restore it, show it…the key words were “fun” and “car.”  That was sounding good so next came what to call this club.  A long list of possible names was suggested. Bob Abel said, “We should call it ‘The Gearheads’.  My wife always says that all I want to do is hang out with my gearhead buddies.”  And so we were born. 

The word got out very quickly about this club for all kinds of cars, and the size of the group went to over 30 in about a month.  Joe Sicotte came up with the idea for the annual garage tour—visit 5 or 6 of the guy’s garages each winter to check out how their projects were progressing, then cap the day off at a pizza parlor.  At first the tours were great, but the club continued to grow very rapidly and size became a problem.  On the last official tour, we had to rent two large school busses and drivers, and close to 80 members went on the tour.  

The club continued to grow, and about a year ago it was close to 170 members.  The size forced us to develop some structure to keep members informed about activities and events, find places large enough to hold meetings (average attendance 60-80 members), print and distribute a newsletter, collect dues, and a host of other things that needed doing.  This brought us to our current system of a steering committee or executive board.  This seems to work well for us and we are now reducing membership through attrition and membership limits. 

As the only original member still active in the club, I have this advice: If your goal is to make everyone in the club happy, plan a club for one.  If your plan involves cars and fun, keep it simple.  The less time spent making up rules, the more time you have for fun.  Just enjoy the parts you like and ignore the parts you don’t. 

J.B.