Start your engines with one of Furman’s lesser known but highly organized clubs here on campus: the Furman University Car Club. Vice President Cole Morehead ‘24 sat down with The Paladin to discuss how the club, which started from scratch in Judson Circle, has tripled in membership over the last year.

The Furman University Car Club, or FUCC, has just begun its second year on campus and has seen a tremendous spike in interest and membership, thanks to creative marketing strategies from their executive team. The club meets every Tuesday night in the Trone parking lot for about 30 minutes before heading out to go on a drive. 

As Morehead puts it, the club began out of happenstance. 

“I was walking back from class one day and Jackson Lehmann and Brady Fleuette were putting a new intake on Brady’s car in the Judson circle with the hood open, and I walked up and said ‘You guys got this under control?’ and they were like ‘Yeah actually we do,’” Morehead said. “And so, we talked and hit it off for about 30 minutes and then we went on a couple drives, found a few more people who were interested in that, decided we needed to make this more official, and that’s how it came into fruition.”

This origin story demonstrates the common interests that so many Furman students have with each other — the reason some of these more obscure clubs form. At a school that prides itself on having many unique student organizations, FUCC is certainly contributing to that sentiment. 

According to Morehead, since their founding, they have increased SyncDin membership by three times as many people. A clever marketing technique that Morehead and the other founders used was to create business cards that they could hand out to potential members. 

“We went around one evening and put them on every interesting car in the parking lots all over campus,” Morehead said. “We tripled our Instagram follower account and then for our first meeting where we were expecting maybe 10 people to show up, we had 30. So, it was great, now we have a really enthusiastic group of people coming out, and it’s going pretty successfully so far.”

Upon finding great success from this strategy, Morehead and some others took more interest in how to structure the club meetings on Tuesday nights. Instead of the unorganized get-together it once was, they now gather in the same spot every week and begin with a lesson where their president, Fleuette ‘25, teaches members about a certain car brand of interest and its impact in the world of motor vehicles. This is followed by open discussion and then, of course, they go on a drive. 

This format has given them much more structure and control over the meetings that now attract over 30 people as opposed to before when that number hovered around 10 or less.

Furman provides a unique opportunity to get involved with people that share similar, niche interests. FUCC is just one example of a student organization that blossomed from a few friends talking about something they love.

“It’s a community of people who love cars and get together most Tuesday nights, and everyone is welcome regardless of the make and model of their car,” Morehead said. 

The meeting structure that FUCC has created, along with the effort that the leadership puts into the process, will foster a community of enthusiasts that will take their organization as far as they want it to go. FUCC’s story will hopefully spark inspiration among Furman students who are looking to join smaller clubs or start one of their own.