About the club
A very important impulse to its founding has been our participation on Ariel Rally in May 2003, organized by the Italian club. Very often we have been asked there from the side of the participants from all over the world about the existence of Czech club. Despite of well known fact, that Stepar and Hanak were among the best Ariel representatives in Europe and therefore a lot of motorcycles must be in our country, unfortunately we have to answer always, that the club does not exist.
The announcement about the Club foundation has been published in Motor Journal magazine, in addition we have contacted Ariel owners, familiar to us personally and the first registrations began to come. For last weekend in November we have planned the first meeting of CAK at Svojanov near Svitavy. After some minor problems (we have found, that in perimeter of 50 kilometres there were 3 places with identical name Svojanov), 17 members from contemporary 23 Club member arrived.
During a short discussion few basic principles were agreed:
CAK will be not officially registered as an organisation, will be not a member of national (Autoklub), neither European (FIVA) associations. It is only a group of people, joined together by an enthusiasm related to Ariel brand name. Therefore CAK will not assure official documents, such as registration marks, bike testations etc.
Club member may be anybody, who approves a real interest and who is able to keep the basic principles of Central European behavior to others. He doesn´t have to be an Ariel motorcycle owner at all, may be that he renovates his machine for a long time, or only that he is interested himself in this brand.
CAK does not want to play the role of adjudicator and to criticise the motorcycles of both members and non-members. If you would like to have your Ariel in original status, we will be pleased to try to give you an advice. But feel free to mount on your bike whatever you like. Important is to take a trip with your Ariel !
Ariel
CAK members are gathering together every last Saturday in November and the last Saturday in March in hotel restaurant Ceská koruna at Lipnice nad Sazavou. Annual Club Rally is organized always on the first weekend in August. The meeting place will be announced to members in time.
These are the basic principles, which have been agreed. Membership fee is free, is used to cover the costs of CAK websites.
Further some inspiring ideas were accepted, such as collecting the data concerning suitable replica part producers, mutual informing about Ariel club´s events abroad, or transforming of the documentation, owned by Club members into an electronic form (CD).
At the present time CAK has 63 members, roughly 2/3 of them having a drivable Ariel motorcycle – except one of them, all being pre-war Ariels.
This is the basic CAK function frame, we will see, how the Club will go further.