Marque Club or Regional Car Club: Which to Start

The real difference: a charter or a blank sheet

A chapter of a national club is a franchise in everything but the money. You get a name people already know, a structure somebody tested decades before you showed up, and a set of requirements you did not write and cannot vote away. The national body decides who may join and, often, what your officers must be.

An independent regional club is the opposite. Nobody hands you a rulebook, a magazine or a policy. You decide whether the Model A owner and the fellow with the 1970s pickup sit at the same table (they should), and you also decide who pays the insurance bill when the venue asks for a certificate.

The old guys who built the national clubs understood something worth crediting: a club lasts longer when the boring parts are already solved. The independents understood something too. A club open to every make never runs out of new members in a small town.

Starting a marque car club chapter

The pattern is consistent. Each of the four national clubs below requires national membership first, and the chapter sits on top of it.

• Model A Ford Club of America (MAFCA). Five current national members decide to form the chapter and petition for a charter. Charters are not granted until every signer has paid national dues. Chapter officers and the governing body must be national members. Bylaws are "not required" but described as "a guide for the operation," and incorporation is optional. No charter fee is listed.
• Buick Club of America, Dixie Chapter. Family dues are $20 per calendar year as listed in October 2026, and $10 for families joining after June 30. Chapter membership requires belonging to, or applying to, the national club, whose dues are on top.
• Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA). Not a single-make club, but built the same way: national dues are $45 a year as of October 2026, and one region states plainly that national membership is required to join, "as national also provides liability insurance for our events." The join page counts 350 regions and chapters.
• Porsche Club of America (PCA). Members join the national club and are assigned to the region where they live, with about 145 regions grouped into 14 zones across the US and Canada. Members may attend events in any region.

What you get for following those rules is real. AACA members receive six issues a year of the magazine, a monthly e-newsletter, online buy and sell forums, national tours and a library the club says holds "over 3 million entries." MAFCA chapters in good standing are covered by group general liability and directors and officers insurance for meetings, tours, picnics, flea markets, shows and parades. A new chapter starts life with most of the expensive problems already handled.

The price is control. You cannot let in the neighbor with the wrong make as a full member if national says otherwise, and your officers answer to a board that has never seen your parking lot.

Starting an independent regional club

A regional club owes nobody anything. That is its charm and its workload. Everything a national body hands a chapter, a regional founder has to build:

• Rules. Bylaws, officers, dues and an annual meeting. Borrowing a national club's chapter template is a sensible start, as long as you strip out the parts that assume a national parent.
• Insurance. No umbrella comes with the name. Hagerty, for example, lists (as of October 2026) year-round general liability for non-profit collector car clubs with limits up to $2 million per occurrence and $4 million aggregate per year, directors and officers cover as an add-on, and a note that the program is "not available in all states." Those are ceilings, not promises, and no premium is published.
• Communication. No national magazine arrives in the mailbox. The club's own newsletter becomes the glue, and a buy and sell board in it is often the feature members read first. Setting those up is covered in the club newsletter and classifieds.

There is a middle road. AACA runs an Affiliate Club Program aimed at "smaller automotive organizations and single-marque clubs," letting them use its club insurance package and directors and officers coverage while keeping their independence and the right to leave at any time. The catch is the one you would expect: an affiliate club must make sure all its members belong to AACA. Coverage terms, limits and costs change by carrier and by state, so confirm with the insurer or an agent before the first event. This is not insurance advice.

Marque club or regional club, side by side

Which one to start

Here is my opinion, and it is the traditional one. If there are five people in driving distance who already own the same make and already pay national dues, start the chapter. You get the magazine, the insurance and decades of somebody else's mistakes for free, and the paperwork is a petition rather than a project.

"A chapter is a house somebody else already built. You move in, you keep the lawn cut, and you don't get to move the walls. Most clubs need the house more than the walls."

Gary Nowak

If the town has three Buicks, two Mustangs, a Model A and a fellow restoring a truck nobody can identify, the marque route will never get you past five members of any one make. Start a regional club, write short bylaws, sort out the insurance before you print a flyer, and expect to be the newsletter editor for a while.

The two kinds of club get along fine, by the way. Plenty of people pay national dues for the magazine and still show up at the regional cruise night because that is where their friends park. The best founders do not treat the choice as a contest. They pick the one that matches the cars that are actually in town.

Sources and notes

• Model A Ford Club of America, starting a chapter (read 2026-10-19)
• Model A Ford Club of America, chapter insurance (read 2026-10-19)
• AACA membership: dues, magazine and regions (read 2026-10-19)
• Dixie Chapter, Buick Club of America, membership dues (read 2026-10-19)
• AACA Affiliate Club Program launch, Old Cars Weekly (updated 2026-05-22)
• Hagerty car club liability insurance limits (read 2026-10-19)