The owner of the Joliet, Ill. property was inspired to create his club concept after hanging out during high school at his parents’ club, where he thought everything was “really cool…except for the golf.”
Mark Basso’s dream of starting up the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, Ill., the Joliet Herald-News reported, stems as far back as his high school days, when he would hang out at his parents’ country club.
“I thought ‘Oh, this is really cool, except for the golf,’ ” Basso told the Herald-News. “I was always a car guy. I had a Trans-Am and always wanted to race it on the golf course, but they didn’t like that idea.”
After years of amateur racing across the Midwest, Basso wanted to create his own exclusive playground for racing hobbyists who could pay big bucks to drive some of the finest cars from around the world, the Herald-News reported.
So that’s how Autobahn CC was born—and Basso’s ambition, along with the help of 50 founding members who chipped in $100,000 each to join, along with another 50 club members who contributed $10,000 each, grew to where the club was able to mark its 10th anniversary on Saturday, October 18, the Herald-News reported.
When it began, the club started with everyone driving street cars, Basso said, but it eventually evolved into a venue where professional-style racing series could be put through their paces.
Today, Autobahn CC has over 400 members who pay a $35,000 initiation fee and $4,000 in yearly dues, the Herald-News reported. That entitles them to drive cars on a 3.56-mile main track that can be split into two winding north and south circuits – all equipped with tire walls, guard rails and sloping curbs designed to help keep the drivers safe.
In addition to cars they own themselves, members get the opportunity to test-drive new models each summer from manufacturers that have partnered with the club, including Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Lexus, Jaguar and Porsche
Over the years, many members have purchased lots on the club property to build garages – known as “Garage Mahals”—and personal condominium units, Basso told the Herald-News. And as those facilities have been created, he added, the club’s sense of community has only grown with each year.
Club members who gathered to mark Autobahn CC’s 10th anniversary included Tony Weir, 46, of Naperville, Ill. “After one summer, three speeding tickets and two sets of tires that I had burned off [while in high school], I pretty much could tell that my future was always going to be going fast in some car,” Weir told the Herald-News.
Weir’s only in his second year with the club, the Herald-News reported, but he already has three dedicated race cars—a Porsche Cayman S, a Radical SR3 and a Formula Mazda—that fit in nicely with the Ferraris, Porsches, Mustangs and other models owned by Autobahn CC’s other members.
And when Weir bought his Porsche Cayman S in 2012, the Herald-News reported, he drove the car straight to the club, so it could be gutted and turned it into a full-fledged racing car.
“I jumped in with both feet. I have a problem,” he laughed. “But I love it. You can just go out, burn up the track and release all your tensions and anxieties from work and stress and life and just have fun,” he said.
For Mike Newlander, 50, of Skokie, Ill., his love for cars started when he sat in his very first Corvette in middle school.
“All I remember is getting in a car and I couldn’t see out of the windshield, I couldn’t see out of the side window. All I could see was the dashboard,” Newlander told the Herald-News. “But to me, it felt like a rocket ship.”
As a nine-year member, Newlander said the Autobahn Country Club is like a second home for him. Even the two-hour drive from his hometown of Skokie in bumper-to-bumper traffic is worth it, he said, because “the camaraderie” is second-to-none.
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