For the past 40 years, a community of automobile lovers has been working to make car culture more accepting.
Great Autos, based in Southern California, is a car club for the LGBTQ+ community, friends and allies. Since the ’80s, the club has provided a safe space in a hobby that is usually dominated by hyper-masculine—and sometimes homophobic—personalities. The club has more than 1,000 members spanning all ages, and has many different groups all across California, including one in Palm Springs.
During a recent interview with Mike Parente, a Great Autos board member and the club historian, he explained how the club got started.
“It was formed in 1983, and basically, there were a number of gay guys in the Cadillac/LaSalle club of Southern California and the Thunderbird club of Southern California,” Parente said. “Our founding members were a couple, Herb Rothman and Ted Davidson, and they were a couple of old guys who had been together a long time and had a collection of classic cars, and were very active in both clubs. They were very well-known and very well-liked in the Thunderbird club. However, at that time in the ’80s, some of the guys did sort of feel uncomfortable and experienced some homophobia, so Herb and Ted had the idea to get some guys together and just form their own club.”
That initial meeting featured 75 people, both men and women, and Great Autos was formed. Parente reflected on the club’s growth since 1983.
“We currently have about 1,200 members,” he said. “It’s the West Coast’s premier LGBTQ Car Club, and we’re very welcoming. We have a number of couples who are allies, who are straight as well, and we even have a straight board member, so we don’t discriminate, but we wanted to have a place where guys and gals who like cars could come together and feel more comfortable, and also have a great social club.”
Parente personally discovered the club a few years after it was formed.
“I actually found it in West Hollywood when the founding fathers were driving their ’57 Thunderbird at the gay pride parade there, and I was all excited, because I felt like I was the only gay guy who liked cars,” Parente said. “I’ve always been a car guy and have collected cars and restored cars since I was in high school, and I finally, finally found my community.
“Great Autos has been a big part of my adult life. I’ve been on the board off and on. I’ve been president twice; I’ve been vice president twice, and I’m also the club historian at this point.”
Great Autos members can be found throughout California—but a large percentage of the members have retired or relocated to the Coachella Valley.
“We’ve always had a rapport with Palm Springs,” Parente said. “We used to have events here periodically. The overall club has one large event each month, and then the clubs divided into areas, and the Palm Springs area is very active. What’s happened over the years is basically the shift from the L.A. area to the Palm Springs area, where now, a lot of our members, like myself, have retired to the Coachella Valley. About 40% of the club is here in the Coachella Valley, so we’re very active here.”
Beyond monthly meetups to check out cars or just get coffee, one of the biggest events hosted by Great Autos is the Causal Concours Charity Car Show, an annual weekend event with brunch, awards and nine decades of vehicles. The club has raised more than $100,000 for local nonprofits. You also may have seen, and/or will see, the club’s presence in the Palm Springs Pride Parade.
“We’re big supporters of the Pride Parade, and we not only have a group of our cars in the parade, but we also supply the cars for the dignitaries, and we really do enjoy doing that,” Parente said. “In addition to the Pride Parade, we also help out and supply cars to the Veterans Day Parade and the Festival of Lights Parade. We really like to do community outreach. We periodically do other smaller events. … Just (recently), we did an event up at the Guide Dogs of the Desert. They invited us up, and we had just a little cruise-in, and they gave us a tour of their facility. We definitely want to be a part of the community.
Look for Parente’s ’71 Ford Pinto, aka Disco Pinto, at this year’s parade.
“I own the club’s mascot, which is a ’71 Ford Pinto covered in mirror tiles,” said Parente. “… It’s like a driving mirror ball, and the club created that many years ago when we were doing a ’70s-themed event. It’s gone on to have a life of its own, and it just makes people smile and laugh, because it’s a mirror Pinto. That’s been a fixture in the parade, and a lot of people know of the club through the Disco Pinto.”
Things, of course, have changed for the LGBTQ+ community over the past four decades.
“A lot of gay men and women still don’t know that there is an LGBTQ+ car club.”
Mike Parente, Great Autos board member and club historian
“A lot of our members, when we first started, were closeted,” Parente said. “We used to send out the newsletter in a plain wrapper, (and members) didn’t want to be listed in our roster, because homophobia was such a bigger thing. I think younger people don’t necessarily feel the need to identify with an LGBTQ group, but with that being said, we do have younger members, and we encourage that, because it is a great hobby, and there are many, many layers to that.”
Great Autos is just one of many groups that have allowed the LGBTQ+ community to explore various hobbies without fear.
“A lot of gay men and women still don’t know that there is an LGBTQ+ car club,” Parente said. “We’ve been, over the last several years, going out and basically trying to promote the club, so people who want to know about it know, about it. One of the first events we did was about six or seven years ago. There’s a big car club event at the convention center in Los Angeles, and we were a little concerned, because sometimes the car hobby as a whole can be a bit homophobic and a bit hyper-masculine, but we decided to have a presence there—and it was great. Everybody was very, very receptive. I personally felt a real sense of pride and awakening in that. … It was nice that we could be there as an LGBTQ+ club as part of the bigger car community in Southern California—because, let’s face it, Southern California is the car place.”
While Palm Springs is an older gay community, and car collecting is a hobby with an older demographic, Great Autos is all about making things more accessible.
“We actively seek younger members and have expanded the scope of the club, because initially, the club was basically ’50s and ’60s cars, and the club was originally called Great Autos of Yesteryear (GAY),” Parente said. “Over the last 15 to 20 years, people just started calling us Great Autos, and we thought that the ‘of Yesteryear’ was sort of dated, so we rebranded ourselves just as Great Autos Southern California.
“All cars are welcome. We have members who have Japanese stuff and imports and even newer special-interest cars, like newer Porsche cars. We’re also trying to come up with an event that focuses on electric vehicles, because it’s really about the friendships and the camaraderie based around the automotive hobby. A lot of our older members just like the Lincolns, Cadillacs and Imperials, which I like as well, but there’s a broader scope to the hobby, and we’re trying to reach out to that.”
For more information, visit greatautos.org.
