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Cars

Car club members share special bond

When members are stretched out too far for regular meetings, the Web becomes the vital link.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published September 2, 2005

The Southeast Dakota R/T Club has had one meeting. But that meeting has been going on for seven years now.

The Tampa-based club shuns the usual car club modus operandi: the newsletters, the monthly meetings in the back room of a local restaurant, the caravan-style road trips to car shows in neighboring counties.

Instead, members of the club, who live all over Florida, keep in touch through a private Web site. They conduct any club business, contact fellow members, share news about their trucks and cars through cyberspace.

"When you've got members spread all over the state, that's really the only way to do it," said club president and founder John Mercedes. "We've got people from Key West all the way to Jacksonville and Eglin Air Force Base."

Mercedes started the club back in 1998, when Dodge introduced the Dakota R/T. For people like Mercedes, who had grown up with the hot Chrysler Corp. cars from the 1960s, the Chargers and the Barracudas and the SuperBees, the introduction of Dakota R/T was like a visit from an old friend - albeit an old friend who had had some major reconstructive surgery.

"It was Mopar's re-entry into the performance market, only for whatever reason they did it with a truck," Mercedes said. "The R/T. stands for road and track. In the 60s, when you saw a Mopar car that had those initials R/T on it, you knew to stay out of its way. These trucks will do a quarter-mile in 11 seconds. That's a 4,400-pound truck with an extended bed."

After enduring a couple of decades in which Chrysler stayed in business only by concentrating on boxy and economical vehicles such as the K-cars, Mercedes was psyched about the Dakota R/T, with its 360-cubic-inch, 5.9-liter, 250-horsepower engine. He bought one of the first ones available in Tampa, and still owns it today.

He thought it would be cool to meet other people who shared his enthusiasm, so he started the club. Mostly he kept his eye open for other Dakota R/T drivers asking them if they wanted to join his new club.

Even then, it was a Web-based club. But there was a problem.

"I was trying to run a Web site and I don't know how to use a computer," Mercedes said. "I can e-mail and that's it."

Luckily, one of the early members was Mike Neuhaus, an R/T aficionado with some computer expertise. He took over a lot of the Web duties.

"Basically it's an Internet thing," Neuhaus said. "But a bunch of us local guys get together for dinner almost every Saturday night, and other people get together with people in their cities. We only have an official club gathering, for the whole state, once a year, and so it's a pretty big deal. Almost everybody shows up to see what modifications people have done since the last time."

Mercedes drives his truck regularly - except when it's sitting in pieces while he's working on it, like now.

Neuhaus admits he pampers and seldom drives his R/T, which he has customized with Barracuda-style exhaust pipes and shaker hood.

"It's a 200O truck and it's got 16,000 miles on it," he said. "You do the math."

Since most members actively recruit -- they leave cards under the wipers when they see R/Ts in parking lots and talk to owners when they see them -- the club grows exponentially. There are now about 150 members.

Recruiting members is fairly easy, because there are no dues, and members get big discounts and parts through Mercedes' business, Southeast Performance.

"Basically, I get them the parts at cost and they just pay the shipping," Mercedes said.

There are strict membership requirements, though. Members have to actually own a Dakota R/T, and they have to live in Florida. Club officials check VIN numbers to make sure no R/T impostors try to sign up.

Membership is also limited somewhat by the fact that Dodge stopped making the Dakota R/T in 2002. There are rumors that it may be re-introduced for 2006, but so far there hasn't been any official word.

"I was just up in Detroit talking to the Mopar people and they say they don't know," Mercedes said. "I don't think they're just not telling me, I think they really don't know."

The word is, though, that if the Dakota R/T comes back it will be in a somewhat different form, something more like a Ram truck.

The club's annual get-together is usually in the fall in Old Town in Kissimmee. Last year's was canceled because so many members were recovering from hurricanes.

"It's usually in September or October but we haven't even made any plans for it yet," Mercedes said. "It may not happen again this year, because a lot of people are still hurting."

For information on joining the Southeast Dakota R/T Club, e-mail john@southeastrt.com or call Mercedes at 813 503-8069.

[Last modified September 1, 2005, 08:26:09]