Today's NASCAR craze? It's only the latest chapter in America's love affair with the automobile.

In the prosperous years following World War II, Detroit responded to suburban spread by churning out a staggering variety of fashionable autos. And to satisfy the appetites of young people driven buggy by buggies—Model Ts to Lincoln Continentals—car clubs formed at many colleges.

Northeastern's Auto Club got its start in 1954 with more than eighty members. During the club's infancy, it was one of the few campus groups encouraging Huskies to pursue a purely recreational hobby.

Sponsored diversions included lectures by race drivers, films on auto assembly and drag races, and field trips to local car museums and auto plants, such as Somerville's Ford Motor Works. An annual rally allowed students to flaunt their steering skills.

Members' engines were revved by more practical matters, too. The auto aficionados above, for instance, had just spent the afternoon at a Skid School run by Liberty Mutual Insurance, where they practiced controlling their wheels and watched movies on safe driving.

Small wonder the Auto Club ignited Huskies' imaginations. For starters, Northeastern once boasted its own automobile school, established in 1903. Plus, in the university's early decades, large numbers of commuting students often climbed into cars to get to campus.

Nothing, they knew, puts you in the driver's seat like a degree.

— Magdalena Hernandez, MBA'02