All I wanted to do was join the club. I figured that if I got a cool old car, I could join the cool old car club. In retrospect, my image of a car club was terribly out of whack with reality. In my fantasy of what a car club should be, I expected to find a group of professional people who gather upon manicured lawns to tastefully appreciate achievements in the automotive arts. Think of a lawn party from The Great Gatsby crossed with a sherry tasting in the Oxford faculty lounge... with some cool old cars in the background. I expect that sort of car club exists somewhere, but not for those of us who appreciate Hondas.
The real problem was that I got back into the car hobby after an extended hiatus. As a teen I had built and rebuilt foreign and domestic cars for fun and profit. But I put that all aside for a television career and a family life for about twenty years. Sliding into my early 40's and its concurrent mid-life crisis angst, I chose to get a little red sports car as my outlet rather than engage in an age inappropriate liaison that could jeopardize my happy marriage. I had my eye on a couple of little cuties (cars) and I figured that ownership of a cool car would allow me to join The Club.
My Uncle is a Morgan man. The automotive object of his desires is a 1960 Morgan Plus Four which is as typical an English sports car as ever existed. To be a member of the Morgan Club one you practically are required to wear a tweed coat with leather elbow patches and smoke a Bier pipe. The Morgan Club is a linen tablecloth affair; they throw wine and cheese parties and plan trips up the Coast for a Spa Weekend at a fabulous resort.
Dad has restored and enjoyed a variety of Fords, but the five Mustangs that have passed through his garage tell you his major automotive allegiance. He and Mom have been members of the Mustang club for years and they attend the club meetings. More of a back-room-of-the-local-Denny's affair, the Mustang club is well organized with regularly scheduled shows and rallies.
Toss in the image of the local Corvette Club (a gathering of really successful Plumbers) the Ferrari Club (a gathering of really successful Dentists) and the Porsche Club (a gathering of really successful Jerks) and I had created in my mind's eye of what a car club should be: Mature folks who organize sedate social soirees with a couple of days each year at the local racetrack so that we can exercise our favorite cars.
When it came time to pick a hobby car, I did the research on the cars but I did not research the car clubs. I figured that an appropriate club would support whatever car I chose. After long and careful thought, I picked an early version of the Honda CRX as the right combination of solid engineering and competitive performance. I was right about the car, I was wrong about the Honda Club.
Actually, there is no "Honda Club" per se. I was expecting a nationally organized association with maybe a little encouragement from the manufacturer to continue to buy and enjoy their products. But that is not in Honda of North America's marketing strategy so the organization of any kind of club to enjoy Honda products is left to the owners.
I have discovered that the owners of Hondas fall into two distinct categories: The general public who buy and use Hondas like the reliable household appliance they are. And a sub-culture of quasi-law abiding performance freaks that the manufacturer may not care to acknowledge.
The Honda-as-an-appliance crowd only cares that their cars run reliably, hold their resale value at trade-in for another Honda and have no interest in Car Clubs. This leaves the potential group of Honda club members to The Freaks (and I do not use this term in a pejorative manner as I consider myself one in spirit).
Generally a younger, less affluent and ethnically diverse, the performance crowd that is drawn to Hondas may loosely organize into "crews" but the limit of their organization is to spread the word about possible mid-night street races. At first glance to the casual observer, the typical gathering of Honda performance fans looks like a gang fight about to erupt. Closer inspection finds nice kids who are stylishly attired in baggy clothing listening to contemporary music that Hips and Hops.
I enter into this world as a bald, fat suburban white man old enough to be their father. My search for chronological or socio-economic contemporaries in the world of Honda performance has proven fruitless in my local area. Conventional Wisdom holds that guys like me should be playing with American Muscle Cars and leave the "rice burners" to the kids. And so it seems to be; I am an anomaly within the world of Honda performance.
My car is "just" a "lowly" Honda, the other clubs do not want to know about me and my Japanese econo-box; there is no club for me to join. It is not so bad, I get invited to participate in track day events at the local road course and I try to run as many Autocross events as I can in my area. But the social scene for us older Honda lovers is pretty thin.