Members of the SLUH Car Club gathered on campus on Saturday, May 1 for the club’s first Cars and Coffee event, giving students a chance to expand their knowledge and interests of cars.

Car Club is one of the newest extracurriculars at St. Louis U. High, having come into existence just three years ago. Though there had previously been a Car Club at SLUH, it fizzled out when its then-moderator, current Director of Theater Operations Tim Moore, left for another work opportunity. It was only during the 2018-2019 school year when economics teacher and soon-to-be Assistant Principal for Academics Kevin Foy took notice that there was not a forum for students with interests in cars. Foy, with the help of Moore, who had recently returned to SLUH, re-established the Car Club, and set about making it a fixture of the school for years to come.

In the early days of the second iteration of the Car Club, a duo of student leaders emerged in the form of current seniors Eli Butters and Jack Rosenstengel. The two became heavily involved in the operations of the club, which saw healthy growth throughout the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years. Members participated in events such as attending races, going to car shows, and having regular meetings up until the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, which complicated the club’s ability to organize events as it had in the past.

As the pandemic dragged on into the current school year, it further compounded the Car Club’s ability to hold events. In addition to weekly meetings, Foy, Butters, and Rosenstengel came up with the idea to hold a Cars and Coffee event, which was modeled off of an event that the club had previously hosted.

As Cars and Coffee approached, 31 cars were registered to be showcased including cars from families of students in Car Club, families of students not in Car Club, SLUH alumni, and even a fair number of people who were unaffiliated with SLUH in any way. 

Foy attributed this surprisingly high number of unaffiliated attendees to the advertising in Gibbons’s emails, which helped to spread news of the event by word of mouth.

“We had a couple guys who were great, they were like professional Cars and Coffee guys,” said Foy. “They found out about it as a friend of a friend of a friend type of thing, and they just showed up, registered, did everything they were supposed to do, but they didn’t necessarily have any particular connection to SLUH.”

Before attending the event, guests were required to fill out an online form in order for the planners to accurately gauge the number of people to expect. On the form, guests could also denote whether they planned on bringing a car to be displayed in the show. By the beginning of Cars and Coffee at 9:30 on May 1, 31s cars filled the faculty lot, close to the maximum number that was to be allowed for social distancing purposes.

As people came and went throughout the hour and a half event, they were able to vote on a favorite car. The plan was initially to assign a different QR code to each car, which was to be set up to a system designed by freshman Thad Berta where voting could take place online. However, due to an error in the printing of the QR codes, voting instead took place manually on half sheets of paper with guests simply writing which car they enjoyed the most.

In the end, the winning car was a 1966 Pontiac GTO belonging to Paul Pugh, the father of sophomore Troy Pugh. With the show containing a multitude of vintage and luxury cars who easily could have won, Foy surmised that Pugh’s car was set apart from the others because of the story behind it.

“There was just a really cool story behind it,” said Foy, “It was his first car ever, he still races it, he’s changed, fixed and broken just about every part of the car, the whole story is super cool. He was also crazy knowledgeable about cars in general, so I think everyone liked the fact that not only was the car super cool, but the guy was super cool, and the story was super cool.”

Though it was only initially planned because other events were unable to take place, the first SLUH Cars and Coffee proved to be a success. Though no official count was taken, Foy estimates that somewhere between 150 and 200 people passed by throughout the morning, far surpassing any expectations that the club could have had leading up to the event. As a result of this success, Foy expressed a hope of making Cars and Coffee a regular event with a tentative date set at some time next fall.

“I think the plan is to do a Cars and Coffee in the fall and the spring each year moving forward,” said Foy. “We actually got close to the edge of the number of cars that we could host (in the faculty lot), so if we get enough cars, we might have to look at moving it to the Science Center lot.”

As for the remainder of this current school year, the Car Club still has one event left on the calendar, with a viewing of the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari slated to take place during eighth period on Thursday, May 20.