By: Austin Andrews

Gateway Car Cruises (GCC) is St Louis’ premiere car club with over 400 members, all of whom are car enthusiasts. The members have meetings, organize cruises and attend car shows. At each of these events, members get the opportunity to hang out with people who have the same interest in cars. It is the only car club in the St. Louis area that accepts any make or model of car.

“[We are] dedicated to cruising, but we’re also friends,” founder Mike Perez said.

Perez created the club with Eric Cheatham in April 2011. This club has a “mega” cruise every couple of months and several smaller cruises and meets throughout the month.

“I met Eric at Cars and Coffee in April 2011, and we started talking about how the car scene was in the 90s, and we wanted to recapture those years of STL’s car scene,” Perez said

The first cruise was in July, in which Gateway met up in Chesterfield and cruised the back roads all the way to Columbia, MO to attend a car show. The cruise was around four
hours long and over 60 cars showed up. Since that first event, GCC has had regular events where they will go on long or short cruises or just hangout and get to know everyone in the club.

“The members of this group are pretty darn close,” member Jake Carlson said.

The club’s most recent cruise was Dec. 10. The club met up at Hooters on Lindbergh then cruised to view Christmas lights and then to Eckert’s Farm for a Christmas dinner. Many other car clubs attended the cruise, including STL Redline.

“We wanted a cruise that overlaps our down period to keep people interested in the club,” Perez said.

Perez’s future plan for GCC is to to see how big it can get and restore what he considers St. Louis’ lost car scene.