“The VMCC has to change”
New Vintage Motorcycle Club chairman Mario Costa-sa aims to rebuild membership of the ailing institution. Here, he explains to CB exactly how he’ll do it
The Vintage Motorcycle Club (VMCC) is the world’s biggest classic motorcycle club, with more than 13,000 members across the UK. It’s hard to overstate its importance – the VMCC has the world’s foremost library of information on British motorcycles, campaigns on behalf of classic owners and has 84 regional sections that organise hundreds of runs a year. But despite all this, storm clouds have been gathering over the club. In 2019, the average age of members was close to 70, membership numbers were declining, finances were all over the place and the VMCC’S long-term survival was in doubt. Against this backdrop, the VMCC brought in Mario Costa-sa, a 56-year-old businessman who had turned around the fortunes of the Trail Riders Fellowship. But whereas Mario was an enthusiastic trail rider before becoming boss, he has little knowledge or experience of classics. We ask him what he’s doing to the VMCC, and whether it’s working...
Is it true you don’t know much about classics?
Yes. They [the other VMCC board members] all laugh at me, because I know next to nothing about old bikes. I haven’t even properly ridden a bike older than 1995. I’ve pootled around on some older bikes, but not proper rides
– there’s always been some mechanical problem, which I eventually fix, that’s stopped me going out for a decent run. But someone once asked John Bloor how come he made such a success out of Triumph when he knew next to nothing about motorcycles, to which he replied: ‘I knew lots about business’. And in some ways that’s exactly
the same with me.
How did you move from business to the Trail Riders Fellowship?
My business is telecoms, building networks for large operators like Vodafone and O2. Later in life I got involved in adventure biking and trail riding, and came across the TRF. I was very passionate about trail riding, but I thought the club was rubbish – it wasn’t organised, and was just a collection of blokes meeting up and doing a bit of riding. The TRF is meant to be all about knowledge sharing, so I decided to get stuck in.
Under your watch, the TRF’S membership and income doubled and you attracted many younger members. How did you achieve that?
The TRF wasn’t operating in a modern way, using the internet, email and campaigning. It had got left behind. I started doing things in a much more structured way. In particular, I’m a big fan of investing in club magazines. Research shows that club magazines get read for a lot longer than PDFS or websites, so it’s a good way of communicating what is going on. Clubs can be very political organisations, so it’s important that individual members can understand why things are done. It’s vital for us to take the majority of club members with us, which is why we’re printing all the VMCC’S plans for the next three years in the next edition.
How did you end up in the VMCC?
Just to be clear, I don’t go around looking for this stuff – it finds me. I was very happy in the TRF and joined the VMCC because I was thinking of getting an old bike. Some members who were also in the TRF mentioned this to the VMCC president, Alastair Alexander, who rode down to see me. He told me about the issues, and asked me to join the board. I was happy to help, working on the club magazine and then the IT systems. And then, shortly after a year of joining, the board asked me to become chair.
‘MY PRIORITIES ARE TO SORT OUT THE FINANCES AND TO HAVE A PLAN. THE
MEMBERS DON’T WANT US TO JUST BUMBLE ALONG’