Our Club History

An informal meeting by several persons interested in forming a Vintage Car Club on the Gold Coast was held in the Girl Guides Hall, Goodwin Park Coolangatta, Queensland on the 11th November 1968, this meeting was chaired by Brian Cowan with Gary Cox as the Acting Secretary, those in attendance at the meeting where -

A show of hands to see if the club could put on a display of cars in December and they selected the 25th November 1968, for the inaugural meeting of a club and at this meeting the first committee was formed as shown in the table below.

On the 9th December 1968 after much discussion the club’s name was decided upon, and the final vote was in favour of “Gold Coast Antique Auto Club”. At the same meeting it was also decided to call the club magazine the “Crankhandle News”. The first car rally was held on the 18th January 1969 starting at 11 am from Nerang, and the first edition of the newsletter was printed in May 1969. At first the newsletter was printed in A4 size with a stiff cover which was hard to fold before sending, in 2001 the newsletter was trailed in the current A5 size which made it a lot easier to fold and post.

The first official AGM of the club was held on the 14th July 1969.

It the begining our club did not have a clubhouse, and initial meetings were held in the Palm Beach Girl Guide Hall. Refer to Club House history for details about our club house and how we obtained it.

The first club wedsite was set up in the early 2000's using Yahoo's Geocities free web hosying service, in 2009 when Yahoo closed Geocities the site was moved and is hosted by Digital Pasific.

In late 2022 and early 2023 the club name was changed to include classic cars, the new name of the club is now " Gold Coast Antique and Classic Auto Club and the club badge was updated.