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A Brief History of the Club....by Tyler - April 14, 2003

The idea of the club was spawned at the Roswell R2K New Beetle Show
in June 2001. Tim L and Mike M (who later sold his New Beetle) were
the main proponents of the club with the support of Ray and Jim &
Trish. Shortly after Roswell, the first club activity was held when
the so-called "original four" New Beetles (Tim, Mike, Ray & Jim)
gathered at a Christian Classic Cruiser car show in North Richland
Hills. The NBs were placed in their own class with Ray and Jim each
being awarded class winner trophies and Mike won a bucket as a door
prize (which became the first inside club joke).

In the following weeks, several more members were recruited from the
ranks of friends with NBs (Alex and Rebecca). Jim also found a
member at Driving School (Karen), and found me on the newbug email
list (where I'd been rambling on as usual about how excited I was to
finally get my NB).

The first official club meeting was held in July 2001 with a total of
seven New Beetles in attendance. Club meetings were originally held
on the third Thursday of each month at Spring Creek Barbecue at 183
and Beltline in Irving. At the first meeting it was decided that a
club website was needed, and Jim volunteered as webmaster.

At the August meeting, Chris from Metro VW was in attendance and
proposed several different ideas to promote the club, including the
preparation of club business cards (for NB tagging purposes) and a
10% member discount on VW service and parts at Metro. The August
meeting also saw the adoption of the club rules (ie that the club
would remain free and informal) and the selection of a logo. Tim and
Jim both prepared designs for the meeting but the members expressed
concern that the designs were to close to the official VW NB logo.
During the discussion of the legality of using the NB logo, Ray
sketched the current design on a napkin. A vote was held and Ray's
design was selected. Jim took the design to a graphic designer and
the logo was adopted at the September meeting.

August also saw the first major club cruise: a trip to the Eureka
Springs VW weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The trip was very
fun and eventful with five club NBs (Tim, Mike, Ray, Jim & myself)
making the trip together. The highlights included Tim and myself
winning third place awards in our classes, and Jim being declared
weenie-racing champion of the world. Lowlights included Jim being
pinched between NBs while lining up for a photo (ouch!) and the first
club cruise speeding ticket, received by yours truly on the way home
(and you thought I was all sweet and innocent didn't you?).

Throughout the summer, an aggressive New Beetle tagging program was
conducted, with the club business cards provided by Metro being
deposited on every NB the club members encountered. Since most of
the members lived in the North Dallas and Irving areas, most of the
tagging was done in these regions.

September 2001 saw the resumption of the local VW show season with
Bug Swarm 7, the FW VolksFolks Show and the Bug-In at Ennis along
with others. These shows proved to be a good place to recruit club
members, as members of other local VW clubs with NBs, such as Joe,
Mark, Wayne & Ruby, Carolyn and Cathy & Fredo, decided to join the NB
club. A Speedzone challenge was also held against the rival Houston
New Beetle Club.

Fall 2001 brought a new meeting location, Joe's Crab Shack on 114/121
in Grapevine. Eventually, management became less and less
accommodating to the club and a new meeting location was selected
early in 2002.

The next major club development was the launching of this club email
group. An existing but dormant Dallas New Beetle email discussion
group, not affiliated with the club, was merged into the new email
group at this time. The email group and Internet presence caused
many current members, such as Cindy, Tanya and Jeff to discover the
group during the early months of 2002. Many of these members
indicated, however, that the Thursday meeting time conflicted with
their schedules, such as David who had been a member for several
months but could only attend one meeting. Via the email discussion
list, it was decided that meetings would be moved to the Purple Cow
on 183 and be held on Sundays. This move proved to be successful and
a key to the continued growth of the number of active members in the
club as over a dozen NBs were able to make it to the first Sunday
meeting.

Several cruises were organized during the fall/winter/spring of
2001/02 with a Halloween cruise to the haunted Catfish Plantation
restaurant and Screams haunted house, A Holiday toy drop and light
cruise, a trip to the Ranchman's Cafe steakhouse in Ponder Texas, a
visit to the Brazos Drive-in in Granbury, and a cruise to the Texas
State Railroad Museum in Palestine. Although Tim and Ray took on
most of the cruise organizing, ideas were proposed and developed by
various members. The club still operates on this policy. If you
have an idea for an event, propose it to the group and we'll see how
many of us can make it out.

In June 2002, a good portion of the club caravanned together to
Roswell, New Mexico for R2Kv3. Club members Carolyn and Wayne & Ruby
took home awards for their bugs and Ray won the alien costume
contest. Other early summer events included the first club Mod Day
and participation in the 4th of July parade.

In July 2002 the club celebrated its first anniversary with a
barbecue at one of the member's homes. This started the process of
rotating the meeting location around the Metroplex as by this time
members living in all corners of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Denton
and even Washington state had joined the club. Since this time, the
monthly meetings have seen on average 15-20 New Beetles in attendance.

Fall 2002 saw more car shows and December the second annual Holiday
toy drop and light cruise.

2003 has seen a new challenge for the club. The planning and
organizing of our first New Beetle-only car show, to be held at Metro
VW on April 26th.