Would you like to hang out with fellow members at some car related event?

Question

Sorry for the open ended question. Its kinda weird to fit it into the format. Basically this is the whole idea:

• Bunch of us agree to attend some car related event.
• Hang out.
• Tell stories.
• Show off our cars (if possible).

My idea would revolve around a USA based meetup. Preferably in the southeast corner of the country.

Ideally:

• A racing event where we could (hopefully) participate or have a kickass time watching. Road racing or Drag. No preference. Even NASCAR, sprinters or any turn-left only event. Well, the figure 8 events too. :D
• A cruising event where we could get into a rental car and totally not add nitrous to it and make burnouts.
• One of those cars & coffee events or similar.
• A giant swap meet for any make. These are usually filled with oddball parts and great memorabilia.

What this would not be:

• A chance to get drunk and kill somebody while drunk driving.
• A bachelor's party type of thing. No hookers, strippers, etc. Unless you go by yourself to the strip club. But that's your decision.
• A business meetup.
• Obviously, no illegal activies of any kind (drugs, etc).

Please reply if this meets your fancy. Not a whole lot of people need to participate. A half dozen would be the minimum to keep it fun and not creepy.

Answer 1

While I totally love this idea, I think the logistics would be overwhelming.

Why I think this:

• Members of the active part of this community are all over the world.
  • DucatiKiller - Arizona
  • Bob Cross - Rhode Island
  • Paulster2 - Virginia
  • JPhi1618 - Dallas
  • Rory Alsop - Scotland
  • Zaid - Qatar
  • Max Goodridge - UK
  • Moab - Texas
  • Bob's Sock Puppet - North Carolina
  • Robert S. Barnes - Israel
  • sweber - Germany
  • JoErNanO - France
  • MooseLucifer - Seattle

The list goes on, but we are all over the place. I could see where we could get small groups together (one of two) for dinner or whatever. I wouldn't even be opposed to using space here in Meta to arrange it (I don't know how SE would feel about it though). I'm just not sure how you could get any appreciable amount of people to an event from this site. I'd be more than willing to retract this statement when we have a ton of people participating on a regular basis.

I have personally met with one of the members of this board. It wasn't hard, but that's just one. I wonder how many others have done the same. I'm sure the answer to that is pretty limited. I used to belong to a forum (Z28.com) before it was bought out. They had a get together every year for over 10 years. It encompassed several days (3 or 4 ??) during the summer in Atlanta, GA. While a lot of people would show up to it (I was never able to go), it took a lot for everybody to make it happen who didn't happen to live in GA.

In 2009 I went on the Hot Rod Power Tour with my son. We travelled to Madison, Wisconsin first where we stayed over night and started the tour in the morning. From there we drove to: Racine, WI; South Bend, IN; Detroit, MI; Dayton, OH; Somerset, KY; and ending in Bristol, TN. I put 2,800 miles on an untested 94 Camaro Z28, rolling along the road with about 2,300 other cars going the same places at the same time. The logistics of this trip were enormous. For just a single trip, it would be less, but cannot fathom what it would take.

Would it be fun? Yes. Would it be worth it? Most likely. How many would show up? At this point, I'm sure few (unfortunately). Again, I think it would be awesome. I just don't see at this point how you could make it happen with any sort of following.

Answer 2

I 100% agree with @Paulster - it's a lovely idea, but very tricky.

That said, various sites do this in different ways. Travel.SE seems to be a good one, so you could look at the way they approach this.

Security.SE, which is my main site, has a different approach - we are going for a chain of contact. Currently we have managed to link from Detroit to Singapore, via New York, Scotland, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Israel, and other places - by having small meet ups (between 2 and 5 people.)

We do usually organise them around security conferences, as these draw a large group of like minded individuals, so if you can aim for the biggest events (Indianapolis, NASCAR etc) that would be your best bet.

Answer 3

On Travel we have a Meta post where users update their location on the globe. This is a useful way to know who is where. We could think of creating a similar post here on Mechanics. This way, next time you go see the MotoGP at Le Mans you can ping me in chat and we might meet up.