A reason to drive

If you're a supercar owner or one of the less fortunate multitude who can only dream of, or aspire to, that privileged status, the chances are that you've heard of Supercar Driver. If you're particularly lucky, you may actually be a Supercar Driver member who has attended one or more of the club's legendary Secret Meet events. Sadly, none of the World of Personal Number Plates production team gets paid quite enough to own a car of the calibre required for membership, but we were able to attend the Supercar Driver Secret Meet at Donington in June.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that our photographer/videographer has attended more than her fair share of supercar events (with emphasis on "more than her fair share", but the rest of the team isn't envious or resentful, honest). Despite this familiarity with the genre, she categorically declared the SCD Secret Meet the most impressive event of all, with the best cars and many, many amazing personal number plates.

Nope, not even a little bit envious or resentful.

One of a kind

"I don't think there's anything like it," says Adam Thorby, the man behind the brand. "People keep saying 'Oh, you should open it up to the public; you'll make thousands' but it's not about that at all. It will always be private and invite-only."

Supercar Driver, or simply SCD to its members and its founder, is the epitome of an exclusive affair. It is structured as a members' club and has 1300 members across the UK. People pay an annual subscription which entitles them to attend the club's events. Approximately 60% of those are then free and the others are paid for. Events can be anything from a breakfast meet to a tour around Europe.

In addition to the previously mentioned requirement that a prospective member should own a qualifying supercar, anyone wishing to join must have the patience to join a long queue.

"We run a waiting list now, so if you're not in it now it's hard to get in," says Adam. "There's only so many of us running it and so many events we can do. We could easily have 2000 members but we wouldn't be able to work it unless we increased resources, so we've put the waiting list in place. There are 500-plus people on that at the moment."

Demand for membership should come as no surprise really. Supercar Driver addresses a common issue amongst supercar owners: something that seems, paradoxically, both obvious and somehow surprising. Although many owners have dreamt of owning a Ferrari, Porsche, Maserati etc since childhood, and despite spending an eye-watering sum to realise the dream, too many of these cars simply don't get driven.

Way of life

"I've always taken great pleasure in getting people who own hypercars to actually use them," says Adam. "That started from the little events, little drives around Wales with a couple of Zondas and an F50, which then evolved through different things over the years to become the Secret Meet, with its hundred amazing cars. These are cars that you might normally expect to see in someone's garage, because they don't have anything in particular to do with them. SCD is all about bringing together like-minded people and giving them a reason to actually use their cars. It's about community and friendships too. It becomes a way of life."

For Adam Thorby, that way of life is partly an inherited inclination: Adam's father, Andrew, has always been embedded in the world of fast cars.

"I think what was key was that I grew up around motorsport. My dad designs racing cars and, back in the day, he designed some pretty iconic Le Mans cars. He was quite big in Formula 3, in Group C in the 1980s and British touring cars in the '90s. He's done it all really, I suppose. A byproduct of that, of course, is that I'm a complete petrolhead.

"When I was a child, we never did normal, traditional family holidays; we only went to race tracks. Dad would work every weekend, seeing different tracks around the UK and Europe, like Le Mans and places like that. I don't remember sitting on a beach doing what most other kids would have been doing but, instead, we would go to race tracks. When I got a bit older I would sometimes get a bit bored as I'd seen it all before, so I used to go and look around the car parks. I do remember that.

"Oddly, my dad wasn't all that bothered about cars for himself and he didn't own anything particularly notable as I was growing up. He did have a Honda Prelude with the pop-up headlights that was cool but, in the family, that was about it for cool cars. I used to fantasise about having them, and I had a poster of a purple Diablo on my wall, but we didn't have anything amazing at home.”

Early experience and modest beginnings

In the absence of a flash family car, Adam's childhood desire for something more exotic was temporarily satisfied by a neighbour's vehicle.

"When I was a kid, our next door neighbour had a TVR Chimaera 500. His garage was next to our living room and I would hear him start it up. I loved cars but I was quite shy and when I told my mum that I would love to go in that car she just said to me 'Go and have a word then. The worst that can happen is he'll say no.' Those words have stuck with me all the way through SCD and it's true: if you don't ask, you don't get.

"I did eventually give the neighbour a knock and he said 'Sure, jump in with me,' and from then on, every Sunday, we would go out in it. His missus didn't like it so it gave him a chance to share the car with someone who did. It benefited me then, but it also gave me confidence and taught a lesson that still works for what I do now: if you don't ask, you don't get."

Adam's first taste of owning his own car was a rather more mundane affair.

"Oh, God! It was a Ford Fiesta in red. It was awful but in those days it was just whatever was cheap and had wheels. All those cars have disappeared with the scrappage scheme now."

Onwards and upwards

When Adam left university he began working in property. As a career, it wasn't a natural fit for a fast car fanatic.

"I wasn't very happy in my line of work. I had started organising some events in 2009, a couple of years after I'd left uni. I met a chap from Cheshire called Rich who was also doing events and we ended up collaborating. We were doing different things under different names but then we combined and started organising events together.

"I just had a kind of burning desire to do it for a job so, in 2013, I moved to doing it full time. It evolved from things like meeting up with a few people in a car park, standing around and then going for a drive and maybe having a coffee. Eventually, we saw potential in it."

As it turned out, the potential was enormous. Demand has been such that the sheer number of events held by SCD has risen to a staggering 160 for 2022.

"It is insane really," says Adam. "and far more than the 100 that we would usually organise. As we don't really do anything in January and December due to the weather, that means we're doing something like three events a week at the moment."

A business but not as we know it

"We all love it," says Adam. "It's not a traditional business and I don't really view it as a business. People ask me 'What's your five-year plan, what's your three-year plan,' but it's not like that. It's run by people who love cars and are passionate about cars. That's the main thing that I'm focused on. I don't sit there counting the pounds and the pence and doing the budgets and all that. People probably think I'm mad but I know when things are working.

"I am involved with quite a few businesses now, it's not just SCD. We're involved with Jodie Kidd's YouTube channel, we run that. We also have various tour businesses so, day to day, I work with a group of companies and build new ones. I'm not quite so hands-on within SCD now so I don't have to do as much as I used to but I still attend 30 or 40 events a year."

And of those events, does he have a clear favourite?

"Secret Meet!" he answers without hesitation. "It's the one I've always organised. A bit of context for that: I did the first one in 2010. We started at Donington and we convoyed to Graypaul [Ferrari and Maserati dealership] in Nottingham. There were about 100 cars involved and some of them were really cool things. I always had an ambition since then that I would hire Donington and do a big event there. I remember talking to my colleagues about it at the time. Everyone around me said 'Just wait. Learn your craft and wait.' So, I waited until 2019 when the time was finally right to move the Secret Meet to Donington."

Whatever combination of venue, people and cars provides the magic of the SCD Secret Meet, there is no denying that the event is one of the highlights of the supercar calendar. Regtransfers photographer and videographer attends a lot of events but the SCD Secret Meet impressed her in a way that Goodwood, earlier in the year, just couldn't quite match.

Number plates: the finishing touch

As one would expect, private number plates are an integral part of SCD and its membership's obsession with cars. The business's vehicles display a range of SCD plates. Even the more run-of-the-mill cars get their private numbers: M333 SCD is on a BMW and one particularly cute example is a Renault Clio Sport bearing CL10 SCD.

"As I mentioned, I didn't grow up with us owning nice cars or things like that but as soon as I buy a car now I always buy a private plate. I think they really make the car. I mean, you can spend a lot of money customising or ordering a new car, you can do anything really, but you can make it completely unique with the number plate. Every BMW M3 CSL is really the same but put a private number plate on one and it's unique.

"I like to see what plates other people have got too. At our events I see people turning up with really good plates and a lot of my friends who are SCD members have got some great plates. It's a big thing!"