WORDS BY Aditya Devavrat
SEPTEMBER 26, 2024
Stepping into The Motoring Club’s flagship space in West L.A. is like a magic trick. You’re in the beating heart of America’s car culture, and yet this enormous 20,000-square-foot warehouse still feels like a private oasis. The club is the brainchild of Michael Rapetti, a New York City native who grew up obsessed with cars. While working in San Francisco, Rapetti found fellow enthusiasts through meetups and Facebook groups, but felt something was missing, and wondered how he could build a more vibrant community. Rapetti remembers thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if a place existed that was a physical space for car enthusiasts to gather seven days a week?”
His career took him back to New York, but the seed had been planted. Soon enough, it was time to “pull the ripcord,” as he describes it. In 2019, Rapetti journeyed across the country once more.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if a place existed that was a physical space for car enthusiasts to gather seven days a week?”
Rapetti’s early days in L.A. were spent making the rounds of Cars and Coffee meetups. He treated the hangouts as focus groups and could sense a hunger in the L.A. car community; it gave him a “if you build it, they will come” mentality. So he took the plunge, leasing a warehouse that would become The Motoring Club’s first home (the club moved into its current space in 2023).
Opening the club gave Rapetti a platform to pursue another of his car-related passions: Formula 1. “I loved a lot of the classic F1 stuff, following the history and journey of [Ayrton] Senna and some of the classic drivers,” he says. “When we opened the club and started doing activations and events, one of the first things I was planning: we had to make sure we had this big projector wall for F1.”
Rapetti had seen fan culture in Europe, where bars would be packed with people on race days, and wondered if that could be replicated in the States. It was fortuitous timing — between the popularity of Formula 1’s Drive to Survive series on Netflix, and one of the most closely-fought championship battles in years between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, American interest in Formula 1 boomed.
But watching Formula 1 in L.A. comes with an inherent challenge: many races start at 6 a.m. … or earlier. Despite that, The Motoring Club decided to host viewings anyway. Slowly, a devoted Formula 1 following among members began to blossom.
“I was surprised by people showing up at 6 a.m. to come watch!” Rapetti says with a laugh. “People realized it was a lot more fun to watch with friends, with full sound and the projector.”
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Michael Rapetti, founder of The Motoring Club.
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Motoring Coffee brings together Rapetti’s love for cars and coffee.
A favorite feature of The Motoring Club is the collection of classic, occasionally famous cars on display. There’s a healthy competition for the most legendary car to grace the clubhouse. Pole position would perhaps go to “Han's car,” – the orange 1971 Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 driven by Sung Kang’s character in Fast X. (The club also has two of Kang’s personal cars, which it is helping the actor sell.) But the Formula 1 connection has also seen four different Red Bull race cars take center stage on the clubhouse floor.
“Early days, when we opened, we were attracting both enthusiasts and folks who were in the motorsports industry,” Rapetti recalls. “Some of the first members were people that worked for different OEMs or builders or designers.”
The Red Bull headquarters weren’t far away, and some of the first members worked at the energy drink giant. They’d come to watch races. Soon, the Red Bull x The Motoring Club collaborations and partnerships began.
“In 2019, the Red Bull team came to me and said we’re bringing two F1 cars to L.A., but we have to build them first,” Rapetti says. “I told them, are you kidding me? You can have the whole club for as long as you want."
That meant two days with the Red Bull RB7 — driven by Sebastian Vettel on his way to a 2nd straight championship in 2011 — in the clubhouse. It arrived in two big shipping containers, with flatbeds, forklifts, and dozens of engineers present to put the car together. Motoring Club members got a rare opportunity to come in and watch a Formula 1 car get assembled right before their eyes.
On the second day, the Red Bull team said: we’re going to start it. They handed out earplugs to everyone present, and the sounds of a revved-up Formula 1 car filled the clubhouse. As Rapetti heard from friends, the engine could be heard over a mile away.
That moment kickstarted the club’s relationship with Red Bull, and cemented its status as a hub for local Formula 1 fanatics. Despite the early start times, viewing parties at The Motoring Club have occasionally attracted over 100 fans. Recently, the RB2, driven by David Coulthard in 2006, was on display at Motoring Coffee for over a year.
Last year, the club did an event with Alfa Romeo, bringing the C43 (Alfa Romeo’s 2023 F1 entry) to L.A. Close-quarters viewing was a unique experience in two ways: the C43 was a current Formula 1 car at the time, but also it was the last Alfa Romeo Formula 1 car before the Italian carmaker’s exit from the sport.
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Four different Red Bull race cars have taken center stage on the clubhouse floor.
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The Motoring Club hosts Formula 1 viewings.
Rapetti tells me there are plans for a Motoring Club trip to a Formula 1 race, possibly a rally starting from the clubhouse to the Las Vegas Grand Prix. A trip to the 24 Hours of Le Mans has also been bandied about.
Last month, The Motoring Club launched its newest location, in San Francisco. From the start of the design process, they had Formula 1 viewings in mind. Rapetti and his team have set up two massive 8K projectors on opposite ends of their space, one in the member area and one in the coffee shop. Unlike in L.A., the San Francisco watch parties will be open to the public rather than members-only. The timing of the launch also coincides with Formula 1 coming over to the western hemisphere for its races in Austin, Las Vegas, Miami, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo, making start times much more convenient for American fans.
The San Francisco opening has brought this journey full circle for Rapetti, who says his choice to go from L.A. to a city not known for its car culture initially brought trepidation — but the soft launch saw people lining up on the street to get a cup of coffee and a look at the clubhouse.
Rapetti had felt there was something missing for a car enthusiast when he was living in San Francisco. Now, his own club is there to fill the void. “It’s been very rewarding,” Rapetti exclaims. “People have been flooding in!”
If you build it, they will come.
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Motoring Coffee brings together Rapetti’s love for cars and coffee.
