Cars and coffee is the front door. Show up on a Saturday, park, walk the rows, and by the third week somebody knows your name. That is the car community. A club is the next room.
Local or national matters less than who is in it. A club is a fixed set of people who care about the same thing, some of whom know more than you do, and it runs both ways. The member two cars down learns from you as well.
The drives, and then the lunches
The calendar is what separates a club from a meet. A route, a start time, a pack of cars, and lunch at the end of it. Then the lunches on their own, with no route attached. Some are networking lunches by design. Most are people who met over cars sitting down to talk about everything else.
“The car is what brought us together in the first place,” says Mario Bailey, Driven Life’s founder and a member of two clubs. “It developed these relationships.”
What a club is worth to a business
Bailey joined his first club as a new entrepreneur. “It turns out that a lot of people in the car club were in the same industry as I was at the time,” he says. “Being around those people, who were clearly successful, taught me a lot, and I used that knowledge to level up.” He has since gone into business with a person he met through a club, and has had help with his own business from members he would not otherwise have known how to reach.
Two clubs, two kinds
Porsche Club of America is the marque club, organized by region, and the car is the ticket. “You definitely need a Porsche,” Bailey says. “It is the Porsche Club of America, after all.” Fast Lane Drive is the other kind: a members’ club with chapters in cities across North America and Europe that runs drives, dinners and trips. “The traveling, the networking, the fun. I am so glad I am a part of these clubs, because they have changed my life.”
Read the rules first
Most clubs have a car requirement, and each club writes its own. A marque club wants the marque. A type club, muscle, Corvette, supercar, exotic, wants a car that fits the type. A few want no car at all: Bailey points to a Ferrari club in the Washington area that takes members without one. Read the rules before applying, and ask the organizer what they mean in practice. It is a question they like being asked.
How to find one
Start with the car you have, or the car you want. A marque club exists for most of them. A city usually has a general club or two, and cars and coffee is where you hear about them.
Then show up three times. The first time you are a stranger. The third time you are the person who keeps showing up.
Disclosure: Driven Life’s founder is a member of both clubs named here and is the byline. Neither club paid for or reviewed this piece.
- Source: Porsche Club of America, read 11 September 2026
- Source: Fast Lane Drive, read 11 September 2026
PorscheCar clubsFast Lane DrivePCA
