A Brief History of the North East Kit & Classic Car Club

A Brief History of the North East Kit and Classic Car Club

The club originated as the Northumbria Kit Car Club in the early 1980’s.

After a short period we became the North East Kit Car Club to reflect the wider membership base, as the neighbouring clubs were the Cleveland Kit Car Club in the South, and the Scottish Kit Car Club to the North.

In the early 1980’s, the kit car industry was booming and, compared to production car costs, kits were cheap. Duttons, Jago jeeps and GTMs were popular members cars initially, soon to be followed by various “Sevens”, Ginettas, JBA Falcons and NCF Diamonds. We also had Marcos, Quantum, Marlin, and Teal represented, before the higher budget cars started to be built in the late 80’s early 90’s such as “Cobras” and Beaufords.

As the club grew, it moved venue from Cramlington to Gosforth before heading to the Newburn Car Museum. When we outgrow this location we headed to Tynemouth and District Motor Club headquarters and regularly had over had over 60 members attending club nights.  With about 50 cars in the club, we attended many events and had an active social life. The demand was such that as well as the formal monthly meetings we had a second informal one later in the month.

Newark kit car show was always a big event for us and many camped for the weekend. The organisers gave us a prominent position as we often had kits on show that were not represented in the manufacturer’s halls. When the film “The Cannon Ball Run” was in cinemas, we won best club stand for our spoof, “The Tennis Ball Run”, much to the dismay of the Jago club who had been on a winning streak several years long. However, they had their revenge twelve months later when our Fairground Carousel came runner up to theirs (although they had brought 6 trailers full of props with them).

Over the years the membership dwindled as a result of the economic downturn, family commitments, less car building, reduced manufacturers choice and regulations that killed off many of the more adventurous kits. As the club reduced in size we relocated to the Robin Hood public house at Murton, in North Tyneside.

The members were not just kit car fans, but also into classics, and some owned both. In March 2015 we recognised this trend and amended our club name to include classics and moved our club night to avoid a clash with another popular club nearby. This has improved club night attendance and our first event, as a new club, a club run, took place in April.  

We're looking forward to bigger and better things for our club.