One day while sitting around in a dorm room, Graham Tharp ’05, Jeff Simonetti '05, and some friends got the idea to start a club on campus for automotive enthusiasts. In his own words, “it wouldn’t be a club based on knowledge of cars,” Tharp said, “it would be a club that allowed us to check out the automotive world and meet interesting people.” And in a classic example of entrepreneurialism, “enable us to make business connections outside the College,” he said.

The real test would be presenting the idea to the Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College. The notion of the club was accelerating just as the sexy car movies Gone in Sixty Seconds and The Fast and the Furious were making rounds in theaters. Hollywood’s take on the latter, loosely based on a real magazine article, was a successful although flashy portrayal of young adults and teenagers in street gangs who race for pink-slips and hierarchal power.

“Personally, I enjoyed those films and found them entertaining,” Tharp said. On the other hand, “We knew that to some people, the idea of a car club would sound materialistic and superficial,” he said. “So it was important to go to the student government and present them with our deeper goals.” Those goals included: plans to recruit women students, hopes to expand to a 5-C club, and most importantly, hone business leadership skills.

By fall of 2001, the car club proposal was green-lighted and The Claremont McKenna College Automotive Enthusiasts Club was official, with Tharp as president, and friends Kevin Shin ’04 and Jeff Simonetti ’05 as vice president and events coordinator, respectively. As interest in the club grew, (there are now some 145 members) two recent and important events have altered its original status: The club recently became a five-college organization and was renamed The Claremont Colleges Automotive Enthusiasts Club (CCAEC). Paperwork for incorporation as a nonprofit organization also has been started, so that, if approved, the club could raise funds for charity.

Ironically, what may be driving interest in the CCAEC is exactly what makes it contrary to pop-culture’s spin on car clubs. For example, you won’t catch CCAEC members cruising on Friday nights in rides so low their underbellies scrape the asphalt, or with blacked-out windows advertising club members’ names. In fact, many CCAEC members don’t even own cars, and there aren’t any regularly scheduled meetings to attend. And unlike the fact that many car clubs have narrowed automotive interests, the CCAEC’s tastes are more diverse, albeit agreeably upscale. When its members mingle, it’s usually during field trips to automotive museums to learn more about the histories of cars and their owners. Guys wear ties, and women put on dresses and heels. Such field trips have included recent spins to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles for its Million-Dollar Cars exhibit, a tour of Ferrari of Beverly Hills, and a trip to the Orange Coast Concours. Still planned is an outing to the CEC Showroom in Los Angeles (a 13,000 square-foot import accessories boutique) and a visit to The Nethercutt Collection and Museum in Sylmar, Calif., (http://www.classics.com/nthct.html), to see its grand salon of vintage cars.

The pedal hits the metal when it comes to the benefits of connecting with these cars and their owners. Says Shin, “The club is intended to give students of the 5-Cs, as well as members of the graduate institutes, a way to network with entrepreneurs who also share similar interests in automobiles. This is especially advantageous for those getting involved in the automotive industry.”

From left, the young men behind The Claremont Colleges Automotive Enthusiasts Club: treasurer Elliott Temkin (HMC '05), Webmaster Sean Cramer '04, president Graham Tharp '05, and events cooridnator Jeff Simonetti '05.

Club members spent a day at the Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin, Calif., where owner Dick Marconi (far left) gave a personal tour of his collection, which boasts more than 75 cars, including a 1996 Ferrari FX made for the Sultan of Brunei. Marconi, who has raced cars professionally, made his fortune in vitamin and nutritional supplements.