Insights gleamed from the official VCOA website at www.vcoa.org
Yes, such a
creature does exist. There are certain
hearty souls in the world who have an
addiction to the
Volvo, and the
Volvo Club of America (
VCOA) caters to the upkeep and enjoyment of all Volvos (even ones never sold in the
United States).
Compared to a lot of other
American car clubs (
BMW Car Club of America comes to mind)
membership
is modest at around 3500. A
bimonthly magazine
Rolling is published. The club is fairly typical of smaller car clubs. There's usually an
annual meet that flip-flops from the east to west coast every year, with
smaller meets in between. Many owners still drive their 35 year old cars every day (fun for a spell, but being stuck in the
Bronx with a broken
fuel pump is not exciting and perhaps
life threatening.)
As could be expected of people who love
eccentric cars,
children of the
Swedish box used to be more often the
devout NPR listener than anything else. With the international
gobbling up of small European
automakers, Volvo has been transformed from the don't-give-a-damn manufacturers of
horizontal refrigerators to the new
Lexi challenger. Volvo people have always had to battle the reputation that the 1970s Volvos had of being boxy and boring, since previous models from the 50s and 60s were halfway pretty and nice
handling. Now the new perception to be battled is how Volvo is just not another
Infiniti lookalike.
The existence of VCOA provides yet more evidence that where
interest exists so follows some organization to cater to the need. Have we ever battled the
Saab owners? Yes, but timed rallies tend to depend more on accuracy, and not the number of
strokes of the
engine.