[media-credit name=”Patrick Halloran” align=”alignnone” width=”500″][/media-credit]

Interested in cars? Interested in modifications? Then the Quinnipiac Car Club is the place to be.

Seniors Taylor Balemian, Charles Blizard, and Jake Armenia are the founders of the unofficial Quinnipiac Car Club. 

According to Blizard, the club started out as a small group of students on campus who had nice cars. The club now has grown to over 80 members in just a little over a month, even though they aren’t officially affiliated with the university yet. The club is looking into becoming part of Campus Life during the spring 2016 semester.

Armenia explained that he always had an interest in cars. Amenia and Blizard are members of a YouTube channel called Barn Builds which is essentially a car show. The channel focuses on unique and interesting ways to modify cars. Barn Builds was launched in late August with one of their latest videos having over 4,000 views.

Armenia joined Balemian and Blizard in the startup of the Car Club from an Entrepreneurship (ENT) course in which they were working on a project dealing with cars.

“My professor introduced me to them because we were both doing car related stuff so when they asked me to join I said ‘sure’ and then we started building a partnership and Barn Build now sponsors the Quinnipiac Car Club,” Armenia said.

In the most recent Barn Builds Youtube video, Blizard talks about the inception of the Car Club.

Blizard explained that their ENT project started as window tinting installation and stick shift classes until Balemian approached him with the idea for the club.

“Taylor came to me one day and asked if I ever had the idea to create a car club,” Blizard said. “I’ve always thought about it since freshmen year and just never really knew the right amount of people and never really got around to doing it.”

The students launched the club a little over a month ago, according to Blizard.

Balemian explained the purpose of the club is to create a community where students can talk about and modify cars.

“What we wanted to do was to build a community to get a lot of these kids knowing one another,” Balemian said. “Whether you know a lot about cars or not, just the socialization of bringing kids together builds a friendly community. And that is the primary reason why we started this up.”

In order to get the club more recognized on campus, the founders have put themselves out on social media creating an Instagram account [@qucarclub] as well as a Facebook page, QU Car Club, for its members.

[media-credit name=”Patrick Halloran” align=”alignnone” width=”500″][/media-credit]

“We’re just trying to get more media coverage; we’re trying to get in the local newspapers. We’re really pushing word of mouth,” Blizard said.

While the club is still in the beginning stages, Balemian explained that the club already has 80 members.

“We really just want to get everyone involved in the club right now,” Balemian said. “We have a main group of kids who show up every Friday and are actively involved in the Facebook group. Our main goal is to build the community and get everyone more involved and then eventually start doing events like go-karting or off roading just to get everyone connected.”

Along with the sponsorship from the YouTube channel Barn Builds, the Car Club is also sponsored by the car dealership Excelerate Performance in Branford.

“We actually got a sponsor from Excelerate Performance which is a QU alumni-owned company. [The owner] is Josh Lockwood and he is sponsoring the club…and they’re hooking us up with parts as well as discounts and advice. They’re really helping us out a lot,” Balemian said.

The club meets every Friday at 3 p.m. at the York Hill campus or in North Lot on main campus.

“We’ve built a community where basically if anyone needs work done on their car or advice or anything they can just come to one of the three of us or to someone who know cars and we do the work,” Armenia said.