Our History and Future

Car-Club.Events is the brain child of Michael Lambert and is the culmination of decades of interest in technology, the Internet and most importantly cars.

Car-Club.Events is a passion project; it isn't expected to be a profitable enterprise, but it is hoped that it can at least break-even. Starting as a simple website to list upcoming car-club and related events within Victoria, Australia, the plan is to increase services and geographic coverage.

The Past

Our founder, Michael Lambert, grew up with a father who always had a project car in the garage. The family's daily drive was a late model Rover P6 3500; there was a Singer (model unknown) that lived at Michael's grandfathers house with dreams of a restoration; then came a Triumph TR4a that ended up being sold unrestored to a neighbour at a garage sale; that was followed by a Triumph Stag that was driven for a while.

In his late teens Michael convinced his grandfather to buy him a Fiat 128 that was stuck in 2nd gear as a birthday present. This purchase was followed by a weekend of work for Michael, his father and his grandfather. The gearbox was removed, stripped down and reassembled. No problems could be found, so the drive from Melbourne (where Michael's grandfather lived) to Adelaide (where Michael's immediate family lived) begun; after traversing Melbourne and getting to the outskirts of the metropolitan area the gearbox clunked into second and stayed there. After a return drive across the city in 2nd gear, a replacement gearbox was purchased and fitted and the trip to Adelaide was undertaken again. Michael never got to drive this car as it was sold before he got his licence

After the Fiat there were a succession of cars (and some motorcycles) in various states of repair. A Triumph 2500 (with some copper pipe to hold the distributor shaft vertical); a Triumph Dolomite (missing a front bumper); a Honda CT90 Postie bike (broken spokes on the rear wheel and stolen before it was repaired); a Mini Moke (driven for a while, but been sitting in a shed for a decade awaiting repairs) and now an Austin 7 Chummie.

Amongst the automotive interest, Michael was also into computers, more specifically, the Internet. Through some luck and good fortune, Michael became involved in the Internet in the early 90s, just as it was starting to become accessible and commercialised. His experience with Internet access provision, website development, software as a service and now technical leadership has given him the skills to start a project such as this.

As part of purchasing the Austin 7, Michael decided to join the Austin 7 Club and after the discovery of his IT skills he was rapidly elected to the committee. Having noticed the complexities in generating and maintaining the club event calendar for the newsletter and website Michael started looking at a technical solution to the problem. Around the same time Michael also join Escape Motoring and the Vintage Drivers Club. It quickly became apparent that the challenge of event scheduling wasn't unique to the Austin 7 Club.

The culmination of this history, was in early 2024 Michael began setting up the Car-Club.Event website.

The Present

Car-Club.Events is currently working to establish the site as a comprehensive list of motoring events. Although initially focussing on Victoria, Australia, we are open to listing events for clubs through Australia and the rest of the world.

Creating a site to list events is relatively simple, and although there is no single source of event data for the car enthusiast, most public events are listed on calendars such as the AoMC or Federation calendars or through organisations such as Motorsport Australia or AASA. To be a truly useful tool, Car-Club.Events is working to ensure clubs are able to list member only events and to restrict event information from non-members. These restrictions are vital for clubs that hold events at private properties or who want to ensure the provide value to members.

The other challenge we are currently working to overcome is to enable clubs to maintain a single event calendar that can be used on their website, in their newsletter and can be provided to 3rd parties. With this work initially focussing on the needs of the Austin 7 Club, we're open to working wioth other clubs to ensure their needs are fulfilled.

The Future

Although still in our infancy we have big plans.

After completing our current challenges, we're going to add the ability for people to sign-up to the site, demonstrate membership of a club and then view private event listings for the clubs they are a member of. This will enable users to subscribe to a calendar on their phone, tablet or computer and have all of their relevant events easily displayed.

Coupled with user registration will be the ability for members to suggest event listings. These will be validated prior to publication, but will help to increase the coverage of events.

In future we hope to be able to offer services to car clubs to help them assess date choices for events (and being able to review what else is scheduled for that weekend); event registration; ticket purchasing and management for events; and sponsor management for larger events. We're also going to investigate membership management options.