Recruiting Opportunity

I just found out about an event that is happening this weekend at Nashville Super Speedway. It's called the Import Alliance Summer 2010 Meet. I was seeing a bunch of dropped and hopped Japanese import cars heading east on my way home from work yesterday and was wondering where they were all going. Randy Shedd told me about this car event that has been going on every summer since 2006. It was started by 3 guys in Nashville, and last year had 5000 attendees with 3500 cars. They are expecting upwards of 4000 cars this weekend. There is a car show, as well as a high performance driving event, and they have teamed up this year with a drifting organization for a drifting event. Information about it is at this website:

http://nextgearinc.com/wordpress/?page_id=2

This might be a good opportunity to recruit new blood into IT and the SCCA at next year's event. I don't know if the local SCCA region is involved or not; they are only interested in autocross, so they may not be there. If Chattanooga and/or Tennessee and/or Atlanta Regions set up a booth and got involved with the tract event at next year's meet, surely the Secret Car Club of America could get some of these 5000+ attendees interested in road racing. I know a lot of these cars are all show and stereo and neon, but these guys spend a lot of money on their cars. It's something to talk about. Any opinions?

Import Alliance is pretty huge. Several of my old friends from my "Honda street-tuner" days caravaned down for it.

They just had a similar event this past weekend at Englishtown called "Waterfest" which is for devotees of CEL crowd, I mean late model VW's. I know that the local region orgaznizes the autocross, not sure what sort of recruitment rate they get, but it sounds like a good idea.

Most of the folks who attend Waterfest or any car-show event that includes some version of competition aren't interested in a boring club run by grey-haired (or in Wreckerboy's case, grey-bearded) men who are old enough to be their fathers.

That having been said, it's a great opportunity to raise awareness about your local region. Whatever you do, do NOT rely on SCCA National's marketing brochures - they're fine for people over 40 but to attract new, young members, I'd strongly suggest that you create a tri-fold flyer that details what your Region does along with pictures and web links.