Most car clubs’ members own and show the same brand, make or class of automobiles — say Mustangs, Corvettes, Oldsmobiles, muscle cars or vintage trucks — but that’s not so for one unique car club in Antioch in which every member has a different make and model.

That’s one reason among others why Troy Schennek and Roger Havens, of Antioch and Concord respectively, started and named their group the Red-Headed Stepchildren Car Club (RHSCC) in 2006.

“We named the club RHSC because we were a different kind of club, an un-club if you will — no yearly dues and no meetings,” said Schennek, who shows his 1967 supercharged Plymouth Barracuda and Volkswagen Beetle at the club’s shows.

Schennek, who started showing his Barracuda 35 years ago, has won more than 100 car show awards. The RHSCC is 12 members strong, with about half showing their cars almost every weekend during “car show season,” which is spring and summer. The rest of the members attend shows a few times a year because they live out of town. Schennek says his love of old cars started when he was a kid.

“My passion for cars started at a young age — my dad used to take us to the Grand National Roadster Show in Oakland, before it moved to Southern California, and to the Fremont Dragstrip for many Wednesday night drags,” said Schennek. “My dad also belonged to the Oakland Strokers car club in the 1960s. … What I love about old cars is that they have personality — they don’t all look the same, unlike most of today’s ‘cookie cutter cars.’ ”

His dad, Oakland’s Don Schennek, joined his son’s RHSCC about three months after it started, but the San Francisco native, a retired facilities manager for a nonprofit group, said he first became a car enthusiast when his oldest brother took him to the Grand National Hot Rod show in Oakland at the age of 12.

“I have a 1923 Ford ‘Bucket T’ and a 1967 Dodge Dart GT that I take to shows,” said Don Schennek, who said he still loves to go to car shows, “because of the bonding with other fellow gear heads.”

His passion for old cars is because “they were made strong, fast and in America,” said the elder Schennek,  who said he also enjoys lighthearted feel among club members hanging out at their cars sitting in lawn chairs.

“We enjoy putting each other down and laughing at one and other,” said Don Schennek, who has 38 awards to date. On a more serious note, he also said, “It’s great to be with my son at shows, but I don’t like it when I win and he doesn’t.”

Troy Schennek recalls a funny but also special memory with one of his best friends, Troy Spencer, who passed away in December and was one of the club’s first members.

“It had to be around 2007, it was Troy Spencer’s first show with his 1994 Dodge Viper. It was a real small show, only 26 cars,” said Troy Schennek. “They had awards for the top 25 cars, and everyone at the show placed except for me. I was glad to see Troy place at his first show.”

The younger Schennek says he also enjoys spending time with his dad at the shows.

“I love my dad being in the club; it’s great to hang out with him,” he said. “Car shows have brought my dad and I very close together; we always have a great time.”

Another bond the club members share with each other is their day jobs.

“I got  involved with the RHSC from their inception, when Troy and I came up with the name and the logo when we were working nights at BART,” said Concord’s Havens. “Troy Spencer (also an employee of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system) was one of the first additions to the club, along with Troy’s brother; Shawn Schennek and his dad, Don; and our friend, Stefen Burdat, who is also no longer with us but probably wears his colors in heaven with Spencer.”

Havens shows his 1964½ (as the early 1965 models were called) Ford Mustang Gasser and goes to about six car shows each summer. Entry fees for the shows, depending on the venue, are typically $20 to $45, which most often goes to charity organizations, and the cost to keep classic cars running varies.

“It really doesn’t cost that much to keep up, as long as I keep it running, like starting it once a month and I haven’t had any major problems lately — thank goodness, knock on wood,” said Havens.

The BART system and classic cars have kept this group going strong for the last 19 years.

“It helped that we all worked at BART for a certain time,” said Havens. “Even though Spencer worked in a different department than Schennek and I, we remained very close.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Brian Pingle and Randy Gonzalez as members, who both are retired from BART. We were all workers at BART, so we had that in common, and we had our classic cars in common, and it was really an amazing friendship that we all shared with each other and still do to this day.”

At the moment, the RHSCC is just made up of family members and close friends.

“We haven’t opened up our membership as of yet,” said Schennek. “But if you see us at a show, it doesn’t hurt to ask, though — you may fit right in!”

Visit them on their Facebook page at facebook.com/RedHeadedStepchildrenCarClub.

Reach Charleen Earley, a freelance writer and journalism professor at Diablo Valley college, at [email protected] or 925-383-3072.