Adam Sekulow of Privé Drivers Society on Building a Private Driving Club Around Your Time

Adam Sekulow runs Privé Drivers Society, a private driving club with a hard cap of 50 members and track days at Road Atlanta. He has been in the car and motorsport world since 2010. What started as a way to connect with his dad has turned into three or four businesses.

Throttlecast hosts Grant Brewer and Dave Codrea had just been to the club’s launch day when they sat down with Adam at The Ride Lounge. They talked about why the club is built around time instead of price, the BMW M3 he has owned for 14 years, and why he thinks Atlanta sets the standard for car culture.

A 944, a minivan, and a Boxster Spyder bought twice

Adam’s dad has always been a car guy. He bought a Porsche 944 in 1986, had it serviced, and then learned a baby was on the way. Adam was born in 1988. The 944 became a minivan.

The sports cars came back as the kids got older. In 2011 his dad bought a Boxster Spyder. They loved it enough to buy it twice. That same year Adam finished grad school and ordered a 2011 BMW M3. With two sports cars in the family, they started doing autocross, then Porsche Club “taste of the track” days.

It went further after Adam got married. He joined Atlanta Motorsports Park and was on track twice a month.

What kept him there wasn’t only the driving. “Honestly what’s kept me in it has been the people,” he says. At 150 mph, you’re trusting the driver next to you, and that builds a different kind of friendship.

From The Driving Club to Privé Drivers Society

The first business came through Velocity Motorsports, a driving-experience company. Adam and his dad supplied the cars, from a Corvette to a GT3 to a Ferrari. When that business wound down, the cars needed a new home.

In 2018 Road Atlanta needed a new corporate partner and had an empty 20,000-square-foot building. Renting the track for corporate events was too expensive, so Adam proposed a club. The Driving Club ran from 2018 to 2021 with a 250-member cap, a clubhouse, and storage. They sold it to an investment group that still runs it.

About four years later, a different group approached him. They wanted something smaller and more tailored. That became Privé Drivers Society, which had officially launched two weeks before this recording. Fifteen people who beta tested it signed on right away. At recording, the club had 34 of its 50 spots filled.

Why a private driving club sells time, not track access

Adam’s argument starts with commercial HPDE, or high performance driver education. It’s the right start for beginners, with instructors and a process. But a typical weekend HPDE runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and gets you an hour and a half to two hours on track. With young kids, his weekends disappeared.

For the people he serves, he says, the issue is rarely what it costs. It’s what their time costs. So Privé is built around time:

• Seven hours of available track time per day, against two to two and a half at most providers.
• No run groups. It’s open track. The drivers’ meeting, as Adam tells it, is short: “It’s your day. You make the schedule.”
• One yearly fee, all in. Breakfast and lunch are included, with no daily fees. There are eight days at Road Atlanta, plus optional member-priced travel days at Virginia International Raceway. He was also working on an event at the 10/10 Club in Charlotte.
• Intermediate drivers and up. There are no beginners, by design, for safety.

The cars on track range from Spec Miatas, entry-level race cars that sell for about $15,000, to Porsche 911 Cup cars. That’s $30,000 to $600,000 on the same asphalt, which is why the cap matters. Adam wants everyone to know everyone. When a car comes up behind you, you know it’s Steve, and you know how Steve drives.

On launch day it rained on the way up, but the storm split around the lake by the track, as he says it often does. By the time drivers arrived, it was dry. There were 47 drivers, and they never counted more than seven cars on track at once.

Track days that fit around a workday

The best feedback came from members who didn’t have to choose between work and driving. One had a conference call at 2 p.m. He ran all morning, took the call from a conference room, and went back out. He told Adam nobody on the call knew he was at the track. Doctors in the club book surgeries for the morning and arrive by lunch.

At launch, prospective members came to a free track day, ate lunch together, and started talking. Adam skipped the sales speech. He has seen more business deals made at track days than anywhere else. The club’s tagline is For the Drivers, and the 50-member cap only changes with a member vote.

Fixing the dealer relationship

In Adam’s telling, COVID cut production, scarcity drove prices up, and flipping broke the old model where loyal customers moved up the list. His fix: “I think all special cars should be allocated from the manufacturer.” A dealer can change hands and reset the relationship. A manufacturer can see who actually drives and shows up. He also calls Motorcars of Atlanta the best dealership in the Southeast.

A 14-year M3 and a 911 named Ron

The 2011 M3 is an E92 with the V8, ordered new. It lasted about six months stock and stayed streetable for about three years. Today it’s a caged race car, wrapped silver, with air jacks, still on its original engine and transmission. It has about 38,000 miles, and roughly 26,000 of them are track miles. His advice to E92 M3 buyers: have the rod bearings and throttle actuators done, or budget about $6,000 to do them.

His other keeper is a 1985 911 in Garnet Red Metallic. Porsche’s build sheet showed it left the factory with burgundy interior. Adam had already named it Ron, as in Ron Burgundy, with a license plate to match. He found a full burgundy interior in California and had Recaro seats done in burgundy with cream Pepita inserts. It sits on period-correct gold BBS RA wheels and makes about 230 horsepower at the wheels. It has been over 80 mph once, and he felt like he was flying.

Road Atlanta moments

In 2018 Ferrari brought its F1 and XX cars to Road Atlanta. A V10 Ferrari F1 car ran a lap of 1:01 and change and topped 200 mph on the back straight. Later, pro driver Jordan Taylor drove the family’s Lamborghini Performante for charity laps and hit 188 mph on the back straight. His dad took Adam’s oldest daughter on a parade lap.

Atlanta sets the standard

Adam remembers Caffeine and Octane in an Alpharetta strip mall, when you arrived at 5 a.m. to get a spot. He credits its strict no-burnouts rules with shaping Atlanta car culture, and he likes that owners here actually show their cars. If a kid asks to see inside, he opens the door and starts the engine. He also sits on the board of the Atlanta Concours d’Elegance, planned for Lake Lanier.

Rapid fire

• Daily driver: a 997.2 Turbo S. He was shopping for one.
• Track car: a 991 GT2 RS Clubsport.
• Best exhaust note: the Lamborghini Performante the family owned.
• Manual or paddle forever: Porsche PDK, 991 generation or newer.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Adam of Privé Drivers Society is above and on YouTube, including how his dad landed a BMW Z8 Alpina on Bring a Trailer for about $60,000 less than one he lost at a live auction. Grant and Dave later went back to see a full Privé track day. Read about that visit.

Adam’s point about community applies off the track too. A car club in Atlanta works best when you already know the people in it. The Ride Lounge is a private car club with climate-controlled car storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta, where members bring their cars to socials, drives, and nights like this one. See how membership works.