When it comes to organised car fun, we live in an interesting time.
On one hand, it’s never been easier to use the internet to find likeminded friends to enjoy the hobby with. Yet on the other, getting something organised can seem like an almost impossible task given the endless number of life’s spinning plates we tend to balance on a daily basis.
Chances are, if you’re on the pages of Speedhunters, you’re already plugged into the car community well enough to have attended some local car meets in the past. These can, to put it bluntly, vary in quality and execution.
Generally speaking, you can often predict what you’re getting yourself into before you decided to spend your evening driving your pride and joy to a public car park somewhere on the outskirts of town.
If the car meet has the backing of a reputable business that prides themselves on high quality outputs and relies on community for their source of income, you can most likely assume there will be a healthy turnout with good management involved. I’m thinking car meets hosted by your local specialist garage, automotive website, magazine or maybe even a coffee joint.
But let’s assume you’re neither of those things, and you don’t have a local business on hand organising these social events. What you do have though is a bold idea to change the lack of car activity in your area and a modest (and very supportive) network of friends who want to see you organise something fun.
This is pretty much the position one of my best buddies, Brayden, recently ended up in. A social butterfly with a keen eye for style and a burning interest in modified cars, he moved to the UK a few years back from Canada. Brayden wanted to hang out with people and chat Japanese cars, but he quickly found out there was no real community in West London to do so with.
So he decided to change that. Brayden, myself, and a couple of other pals spent many evenings chewing the fat, trying to figure out the most efficient way of building this community without inviting the wrong crowd that most worry about when organising these evenings.
You know the type, the unnecessarily-excessive-limiter-bashing, no-good-doing vultures that linger about looking for an opportunity to make a scene out of themselves at any given opportunity. The evil villains in our world that whether they like it or not, give regular car enjoyers like you and I a bad image to the public.
Because it’s the general public you need to consider most, in my opinion, when hosting events. Rule number one, and possibly the most important one – don’t piss off the locals. Choose a location relatively out of the way where you can gather without annoying Karen, who is, conveniently, probably wanting to go to bed the same time you decide to gather.
Rule two, market yourself properly. I’ll let you into a little secret: The word ‘marketing’ is usually associated with university degrees and black magic – two things you definitely don’t need access to in order to create an Instagram account for your fortnightly get together. Get your creative buddy with a passive interest in graphic design (we all have that one friend – Dino, I’m looking at you) and get them to cook you up a 4:5 poster to share on your new Instagram account.
Rule three, manage your own expectations. Don’t hope for 150 people to turn up to your first event. The way Brayden did it was perfect. He invited a small group and asked them to invite just their closest buddies. If you get 10 cars together, celebrate your success and enjoy the fact you’re 10 cars larger with your now new, own small community than you were back when you didn’t have an event to attend.
The photos you’re seeing here are from Brayden’s fifth event, which attracted a few more cars than the 10 at his first one. Named ‘Vengafest’, after his social media handles, the event has grown in size each time, as has the circle of friends flying the flag for the get together. The slow growth made it what it is though.
From the outside, it’s easy to imagine that quick growth is the only sign of success. But the bigger they are, the harder they often fall. Quick growth will eventually result in the wrong crowd coming along to ruin your growing empire as you simply don’t have the resources and event maturity to know how to deal with it.
And that’s how your event will end up being a one-hit wonder, and nobody wants that. Five minutes of excitement is not a fair trade for your passion and efforts. If you think otherwise, name me two Vanilla Ice songs…
Michał Fidowicz
Instagram: candyshowroom
