Club Corvette Sweden
The man who sparked the idea to bring together all Corvette owners in Sweden – approximately 75 known at the time – wanted to create a club where they could meet and swap parts. This is still a valid idea but with less emphasis on the swap part. Instead has the meeting part increased – during a year members organize own or take part in other’s activities, regionally or inter-regionally, over a hundred times. This is fantastic.
The Club
Club Corvette Sweden (CCS) is one of Sweden’s biggest clubs for enthusiast cars, and one of the biggest Corvette clubs outside of USA. The club was founded in 1974 and had at the end of 2018 over 2400 members. Among themselves, the members own over 2600 Corvette. The members come from all over Sweden and also from abroad (e.g. Austria, Germany and Malta, besides the other Nordic countries).
A Corvette club as big as CCS has more than one string on its bow. The main thing is, and has always been, to help Corvette owners to get together with other Corvette owners. In the beginning the possibility to find and swap parts, for modifications rather than for repairs, was important but this has given way for more purely social activities. After all, there are now quite a few companies, in Sweden and abroad, offering all the spare parts and fancy accessories you can dream of, including tuning and customizing. This was not the case in Sweden in the early seventies.
New sections
In the early days racing was an important activity, quite natural considering the characteristics of the early Corvette. Plus, and maybe more important, that many of the Corvette owners then were young pre-children people, as opposed to today when the ratio has swung in favour of the less young post-children people. Lately the importance for racing in CCS has increased, though, and the club has now a section especially for racing. A number of times during the season race tracks are rented and members spin their wheels. Each year a Club Championship is arranged.
“Oldies but goldies” is a phrase we often use for the first generations of Corvette. To show these jewels the appreciation and admiration they deserve, yet another section, the “Oldies”, has been set up especially for members owning a Corvette C1, C2 or C3. It has its own internet forum and is working to organize a competence pool out of the extensive technical knowledge we know is hidden in the club. The idea is also to get all old Corvette out of the garages and on to the streets. Because we know they are there but we too rarely are given a chance to actually see them.
Nationwide
CCS is organized in ten districts, covering the country from north to south. The districts arrange, primarily during the not-so-snowy part of the year, a lot of local get-togethers, picnics, tours and excursions and often these extend outside the district.
The club take part in some of Sweden’s biggest meetings, such as Classic Car Week in Rättvik and the Power Meet in Västerås. The latter is maybe the world’s biggest gathering of American cars with over ten thousand (10 000!) vehicles.
The big club event is the yearly Summer Meeting. It has been arranged since 1975, an unbroken chain of events from the first small get-together – 38 Cars – to close to 400 Corvette nowadays.
Benefits
CCS issues a quarterly magazine, CorvetteMagasinet, since 1980. Members enjoy discounts on spare parts and accessories and there are also advantageous insurance policies available. The list of vendors giving us discount is long, as of today it holds forty different companies offering most anything that a Corvette could need. CCS also runs its own shop with a wide variety of necessities, though not spare parts.
CCS has an internet forum on its home page, open to read also for non-members. The club works hard to develop the technical competence, i.e. to spread knowledge about how to repair, tune and refine one’s darling Corvette.
CCS organizes road tours, in addition to what is done locally. Last tour went to Norway, including an over-night trip with the famous Hurtigruten. Other tours have gone to France, Germany and Scotland. And, now quite some time ago, to USA. A tour always includes Corvette-related items as well as more common cultural events.
The Car
The first Corvette was launched by General Motors already in 1953, as part of the Chevrolet model line. Today we have the sixth generation and the characteristics remain unchanged – it is still a strictly two-seated sports car, rear-wheel drive, with frame and a fiber body. Unlike in USA is Corvette in Europe marketed as a brand of its own, without the first name Chevrolet.
Since 1953 are produced 1.5 million Corvette and more than 6000 of these have found its way to Sweden. This is said to make Sweden the country with the highest Corvette density per inhabitant.
Corvette is today ranked a top performance sports car and makes brands like Lamborghini and Porsche worry about what is breathing down their necks. Tests by car magazines show top-class acceleration and road-handling and the hottest versions are equal to or faster than cars like Porsche Turbo and GT3. At the same time the standard versions are easy to drive and very comfortable, making them attractive also for people who want a car, fit for daily and relaxed use. And are happy with max one passenger …
Contact President Christer Woxberg, president@clubcorvette.se
