Our Club

The BMW Vintage Car Club of America (BMWVCCA) Started life in 1974, primarily through the efforts of Dick Neville and Gil Stewart.  Dick was serving as secretary to the fledgling BMWCCA under Parker Spooner at the time.  He recognized that the need of vintage car owners were vastly different from the needs of those who drove newer BMWs.  With full support of Parker, Dick and Gil formed the club as a division of BMWCCA to serve the needs of the vintage community.

The founders soon moved the club further away from BMWCCA by forming a non-profit Massachusetts corporation with Dick as President, Gil as Secretary/Treasurer, and Erniw Weil as Vice President.  From the beginning Dick was the driving force behind the club.  His intention was to build an organization that would foster communication among members, and promote the idea of getting those cars out and driving them.

In 1990, Dick’s lifestyle changed abruptly and he moved from Massachusetts to Florida.  There he found his interests in old BMWs waning.  A short time later he made the painful decision to sell his 1941 BMW 327 and turn the management of the club over to Tom Graham.  Under Dick’s 17 year tenure the club grew from 56 members to a little over 100.  Membership continued to grow slowly over the years and now stands at nearly 200.  There are also over 350 vintage/classic cars in the club database.  The rise of the Internet signaled a shift in global communications and helped the club forge some key relationships with the world wide vintage BMW community.  At the same time, more and more of the club cars are being restored and seen at vintage car shows and road events.  We are still a small club and are likely to remain so.  Our primary service area is North and South America, but we have a scattering of members from all over the world.

Other Vintage Clubs

The first BMW club was undoubtedly the one formed before WW II in England.  It was called: The Frazer Nash and BMW Car Club.  That club faded away during the war, but another English club came on the scene in 1952, it was The BMW Car Club, formed with 25 members who all owned pre-war BMWs.  There were also several ad-hoc BMW clubs that sprang up in the US in the ‘sixties.  One on the East Coast, organized by Carl Reitzel, and another on the West Coast chaired by Phil Bartlett and Don Woodward.  Both were loosely affiliated with the English club.  There was also a short-lived BMW 507 club run by Barry McMillan. It is important that we recognize all these early pioneers who helped keep the flame alive during the years that BMW largely ignored their own history.  Without them, and the foresight of Dick, Gil, and Ernie, our cars may well not have survived to this day. Car clubs, like ours, provide a valuable service to the members, to the automobile industry, and even to society in general. 

In in 2004, in colusion with BMW of North America, Goetz Pfafflin started his own second vintage BMW club: the BMWVCCCA. To serve their own ends, BMW of North America instructed him to include all BMWs 25 years old and older (the 2002, 320i, etc.).