Montana's oldest car club 55 years strong
The oldest active Montana car club is celebrating their 55th anniversary this year, giving members a chance to look back on the history of the club.
On the front of the club’s shop, a silhouette-style sign hangs of the first vehicle the club ever owned, a 1920s Model T Ford. Underneath the sign reads “1961,” the year the club was founded.
The club held their first meeting on Oct. 22, 1961 at Phil Barr’s garage. During that first meeting, the eight members voted on a $5 initiation fee and decided to find a garage to work on their projects. Their first event was held in 1962, where they held safety inspections and installed seat-belts in vehicles for a $10 charge. The club started hosting dances at the old Moose Hall to pay off the rent on the building they moved into. In 1968, the club moved into their current, permanent location up Shaughnessy Road on Hogan Drive.
According to Gary Rantala, Igniters Club member for over 20 years, most of the money the club makes goes back into the community.
“We have always been civic-minded to try to help the community,” Grace Rantala, club member, former president and wife of Rantala said.
“We want to create a good image to the community because in a lot of places, hot-rodders are not a good image,” Gary said. Civic-minded is how they’ve been since the beginning. According to the minutes of the club’s earlier meetings, the members used to have to carry spare gasoline, oil and water in their vehicles at all time in case they ran into someone on the road who needed help. To promote safety, if any of the members were to receive a traffic ticket, they would have to pay an equal amount of money to the club.
The current club members have helped their own members as well as the local community in recent years. They’ve raised $25,000 for a member’s wife who had kidney failure, gave Thanksgiving baskets away to two families in need of support and helped needy families with everything they need for Christmas.
Ronald Remp was one of the members that the club helped out along the years. Remp passed away in 2007 after a battle with cancer. After hearing that Remp had terminal cancer, the club wanted to surprise him by finishing the car he owned. The car had been sitting in Remp’s garage for 15 years, Gary said. When Remp left for his first round of chemotherapy treatment, a group of the club members took the car, completely repainted it with new interior and made some minor repairs to the engine. On Thanksgiving Day, they surprised Remp with an unveiling of the car at the shop.
Rantala also admitted that many of the events they put on go to benefit the community rather than the club, including the Saturday evening dance.
“We don’t really have to put the dance on Saturday night. We never make money on that dance, but it keeps everybody in town one more night to all them businesses,” Gary said.
The club’s biggest event, and Libby’s biggest event of the year, has gone through many changes over the years. The Igniters car show was originally a few cars in various parking lots with hotdogs and hamburgers. In the early 1980s, the club started running an event called, “Igniters Timber Run” to go in conjunction with the Logger Days events. Because some people confused that name to mean a running event and showed up to run around the track, the name was changed again. The Igniters Hot August Nights name ran for 20 years before an organization in Reno, Nev. with the same name threatened a lawsuit. Since then, the event has been known as “Ignite The Nites.”
Gary said that in the very beginning, the event would draw 10-20 cars, and now over 500 cars show up.
The club has also grown from having eight members in 1961 to having 150 current members, Gary said.
The current Igniters club shop has also gone through many changes. With upgrades and additions over the years, including a large meeting-room addition this year, the club has come a long way from that first meeting at Phil Barr’s Garage.
Reporter Bethany Rolfson may be reached at 293-4124 or by email at Reporter@TheWesternNews.com.