Short intro
Well – my name’s Klaas De Waele, I’m better known as Kayjey to most of you, I was born in 1977 and will tell you about the whole history of fccuk.org.
The first meeting with the UK guys
After having acquired my 20vt plus Coupe some time in March 2000, I saw there was some nice but very fragmented info to be found on the web. With some basic experience in web development, I set up the site fiatcoupe.f2s.com, which grew out to have a (very tiny) Forum.
During one of my searches on the web I found coupe-sport.co.uk and got in touch with its owner James Northam. While his site focused on the technical side of the Coupe, with for example how-to guides, I tried getting the people together and share info, pictures,… the community stuff. As the Forum was getting good initial attention, I realised I would need a more performant Forum software to replace the extremely basic and maintenance-heavy Microsoft FrontPage setup. After a short search I set up Ultimate Bulleting Board – later called UBB.Classic. And right before summer I saw James also set up a Forum to streamline some communication between Coupe-owners. That’s when I thought we’d better join forces instead of fragmenting the owners database.
In August 2000, everything was set up (with a layout and colour scheme to match both sites) and following some time working together and getting to know each other online, we actually organised a very small meet-up in a pub somewhere in Guildford. It was the first time I went to the UK – and it was only for a day. Unfortunately I was in a Punto HGT because I had to take part with the Coupe due to some changes in my life.
It wasn’t just James and me who were there of course: There was some guy Paul Baker with his better half Nikki Kay, Alexander Smith who had an LE with plans for some serious mods, a guy named Dave Gibbons with a Portofino Blue Coupe – together with wife and kid – and ‘Burnsy’. Later on also Marco Rodogno arrived. We all had some nice food, a nice chat and Burnsy blew up his engine. Not the first, not the last.
F2s taken down
Unfortunately, f2s stopped its free hosting service in 2002. I switched the Forum to Hostproof, who came with a splendid hosting offer for our still small website to help us out – back in a time where the free hosts were stopping their services and non-free hosts were mighty expensive. We also had the first Forum problems. With the true domain and some visibility caused by "Dyno Days", every month we would go through our available bandwidth faster and faster, so several upgrades were done to the hosting package to make sure we were live every single day. We were getting towards 15GB / month of traffic with around 40,000 visitors a month! This thing was outgrowing even the Forum software we had chosen and we decided to take the step towards a different product by the same supplier. It was a nice Christmas present for our visitors. Thanks to the new software, bandwidth was also down as the Forum was much more efficient and lighter. Then again, on came the Dyno Day 2003 and we faced another drop-out,, after which we dug in deep and upgraded to an ever bigger hosting package with room to grow.
The club
But now I'm just rambling on about the Forum. Let's go back to 2001. With the Forum running smoothly (well... every now and then at least when we didn't go over the available bandwidth) and a nice uptake in number of visitors, the guys over in the UK started having frequent meetings. I took the boat twice a year to join in and it was after one of these trips in 2001 that we went to an Italian restaurant where Marco Rodogno came forward with the idea of setting up a club. "Good idea" – we all thought – and so we didn’t hesitate and started with the practicalities.
Not everything went smoothly but we did have a site live that year and good plans for the next. Being in Belgium and James having moved to an Audi TT, Paul Baker (Scooby) became club president, Nikki Kay (Bobblington) was treasurer, and Dave Gibbons, Nigel Ogram, Marco Rodogno and myself became members of the board. I still have a record of those first online meetings we had, where I was pressing the buttons of design programmes to come up with a logo we all liked. Oh, and a name! FCCuk. I even actually created a duplicate of the very basic chatroom we were running to have those meetings. How MSN changed our lives over these years! It took up great amounts of time and energy: A hint of things to come.
The goal of the club? Making sure we were able to continue running the thriving and content-rich Forum was one, but getting people together was the most important. To keep the Fiat Coupé on the road, have people enjoying it more and sharing knowledge with like-minded owners, making things cheaper through the power of numbers,… probably the target of any club.
Because Up next on the to-do list were the gifts. The initial uptake of members from April 2002 gave us a clue about how much we could spend and how many we needed, and we ordered a Zippo pen and keyring set (with FCCuk logo engraved of course) for all of the members. Paul and Bobblington tried to join up with as many Coupe meetings as they could and raked in some members. Even Auto Italia's events at Brookland and Donnington were on the agenda - they actually featured the Club in the September magazine issue!
In the summer of 2002 we had our first club event: quad lessons, XRV driving and clay pigeon shooting; followed by camping and lots of bacon. Alexis Grant (Begbie), current (2008-2009) Club President, was basically known for driving a Tipo 'Brick' (not 'Break') with a 16vt Coupe engine (and lots of pressure under the bonnet) and for being the barbecue master of the camping. It was so great we actually thought all the time we had put in beforehand was really and truly worth it. And it was!
Around the same time we were playing with the idea of a club newsletter, featuring some Coupe-related articles, stories and technical info as well as specific club info. We ended up with 2 newsletters, after which we kind of ran out of input from our members and it died a silent death. I’m sure however we will once be able to find new input (there has been serious new Coupe-related developments since 2003) and get some people together to do a new design, writing, layout,… and you will find a link to the old newsletters in the newsletter archive of our club section, of which the ‘archive’ is available to non-members.
Fiat UK
After arranging some quality discounts for the club members and getting to know more and more people (and with the cars getting older and older) we found out the Coupe wasn’t free of any design flaws. We actually got in touch with Fiat UK who started official communication with the club and we received enormous help from them regarding the exhaust manifold issues. Things were looking shiny!
The second year and further on
With a successful first year as motivation, we (well mainly Scooby and Bobbs) jumped on the organisation of the second year and the necessary events. For me, real work was building up so I really couldn't free up enough time to do much. I only ended up visiting a classy hotel that year together with my sister to meet up for the Christmas Event (actually held in January), somewhere in Sheffield, where we had the most wonderful time – and lots of new faces, even a couple of them coming from mainland Europe. How I would have loved to live closer to the people that made the club: a bunch of normal people passionate about our common interest and a whole lot of members who showed such great love for the car - appreciating the Fiat Coupe Club. Unfortunately, apart from the tank paintball / hover craft racing / laser shooting / dog racing summer event (another ‘wow’ Club event that was truly unique and probably the most fun thing I even did) I wasn't able to do the round trips anymore. Life changed, money was becoming an issue,…
Capturing the info
In 2005, we started a project to organise all the info on the Forum into a BIG FAQ. With the help of several Forum members, all the technical info that was ever posted on the Forum was being reviewed and condensed into separate threads. A major undertaking, but there was just so much useful info on there, and organising it for our members would be just wonderful.
The Big Crash
Over time, we’ve gone from the UBB.Classic Forum to UBB.Threads – which has given us better performance and more functionality. We’ve stayed with this software up until now and plan to do so in the foreseeable future. But with rising costs for the hosting it was decided to move towards a cheaper host as most of the money was actually invested in the server – something we thought would need changing. Moving to a ‘cheap host’ was probably the worst thing we ever did. Not only were they cheap, they also didn’t pay their bills with their suppliers – who subsequently decided to stop providing services. This not only meant the site and Forum went down late 2005, it also meant all data (all posts on the Forum ever made) was lost. Including the FAQ. A huge loss to be honest. And since we relied on a backup solution provided by our service host, we really lost just about everything. This meant we had to start from scratch – which we did in 2006; moving back to Hostproof.
Continuing the Club
After several calls for help by the club board in 2007, several Forum and club members stood up to help out. Nikki and Paul were planning on moving to Canada after some less successful business moves, and most of us were really tied up in other stuff. A hectic period followed, where everybody tried to align expectations and efforts, as well as vision and time-to-spend. It was a hard time, but by summer 2008 things started clearing up and in October a new structure was finally in place and serious decisions were being made with the new team.
Looking back and looking forward
So… looking back, was it all worth it? Well… I have spent thousands of hours on the sites and club. For the first 2-3 years I read (and where needed moderated) every singly post being made on the Forum. Would I have done it differently? No – because it was a passion and at the start I had the time and energy. What I would have changed… maybe move to the UK and enjoy the fruits of what we put into it; enjoy the widely available second hand (and cheap) Fiat Coupe’s and the access to quality specialists that know the car; being able to do practical things for the club and help with the organisation of the events. Because everything that was done before 2008 has been the result of time and effort of the other board members, mainly Bobbs and Scooby who organised several fantastic events and get-togethers.
That’s about the whole story of the club in big lines. We’re in the 6th year now of the club and there are great plans for the future. I’d love to see us celebrate the 10th year with a big event, but in the meantime we should all enjoy our cars and all the benefits the club brings. Oh and of course the daily portion of Forum posts.
It’s been a wonderful few years and I’m happy and proud to have been there as one of the guys who started it all, and the fact that I made one of the sites that in the end grew into the club we now have. I’m sure James Northam actually contributed the most to bringing in UK members – being from the UK himself and actually helping out owners with technical stuff – and I would never have been able to start anything club-like from Belgium. So credit, as far as I’m concerned, goes to those people who saw our initial effort and realised the potential. Those people who contacted others and who came up with the club idea. It had to be done. The UK is big enough for it, and the Coupe is big enough in the UK. It’s wonderful to see it’s still alive and kicking 9 years after we first started off with the sites.
And it’s amazing to see the Coupe is still a respected car. Will it turn into a classic? Well I’m sure it’s already a bit of a cult car. And a cheap one at it. One that can empty your wallet if you make the wrong choices, but surely one that can bring amazing moments into your life. It will continue to live on with the help of so many people who know the ins and outs of the car, and who are modifying it to make it better, faster,… or to just keep enjoying it on the road or track. It certainly has its flaws, but many just fall in love with it. Isn’t it just those ‘qualities’ that make a cult car? And isn’t that why – when I have the money – I will probably try to buy another one?
An update
Looking back to this text that I wrote in the summer of 2010... I already gave the hint: I bought another Coupe in 2010. Something I longed for ever since I 'lost' my first one. I don't know what it is, because I know very well how new cars drive. In fact this Fiat Coupe Turbo Plus is the first second hand car I bought. There's just something about them. It's the Italian styling, the 'underdog' brand, the 5-cylinder music, the turbo'd power delivery. Although this car was a well cared for example, I just HAVE to keep this one picture perfect. It's being driven a good 10.000 miles a year and maintained over in the UK. It's the single material thing I can really miss.
