Club History

It seems as though the club was formed in early March of 1999, and our first official meeting took place on April 24th. It came about because two small groups of folks, one in MA and one in CT, had the same idea -- there should be a Land Cruiser Club in the New England area. While the two groups really didn't know each other at all, the individuals were all bugged by the lack of an organized group of Toyota enthusiasts, despite the prevalence of trucks on the streets. The two met up when Bill Fiora wrote a simple email to the Land Cruiser Mailing List testing the waters to find out if there were any Cruiser Heads nearby. Dave Beattie up in Boston responded on March 2nd:

Hey Bill,
Please include me in your informal list of NE cruisers. I would love to see a Southern NE chapter get rolling and we have lots of potential participants. I can think of 6 or more around here. Let me know. If we don't start a club, at least we should wheel and help work on trucks. Hope to hear from you...
Dave Beattie

From then on, it has been like water out of a broken dam. We got names and addresses of local TLCA members from Karr Accord. More than 50 people expressed interest in the club by the time of the first meeting, and there were over 25 in attendance that day. Currently we have about 40 members, many with spouses, sweethearts and kids. It was clear from the outset that we did not want to form a general 4WD club, as the region already has plenty. We set out to create a club modeled after the guidelines of the Toyota Land Cruiser Association (TLCA). That is, focused on the Land Cruiser, Hilux minitruck, and 4Runner, but open to our friends and trailmates with other vehicles. The first order of business at the first meeting was a vote to pursue status as chapter of the TLCA.