Alphard Owner's Club

If you own an Toyota Alphard in either Malaysia or Singapore and you are not aware the existence of a Alphard Onwers' Club in existence, head over to http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/.

Back in late December last year, a few enthusiatic Alphard Owners mooted the idea of forming an Alphard Owners Group. The objective is to have a common place for passionate Alphard owners to share their knowledge on their giants as there are not much information available on Alphard on the Net other than Japanese website.

On the 1st week of January, a dozen or so Alphard owners who used to meet at the Toyota MPV threads in the Motor Trade Online Forum met for the 1st time in a little café in Bukit Jalil. When I said passionate, I really mean it because the first gathering actually have Alphard owners coming all the way from Johor Bahru and Singapore! The group agreed to set up a dedicated forum for Alphard Owners. A fellow member from Singapore took up the challenge and offer to set up this forum on his own expenses. On January 8, 2009, the Alphard Owners' Club (AOC) online forum was officially launched. Even though the forum is called AOC, it is not an official club registered with ROC yet. There is plan to register the club eventually but at the moment, it still exist as an online forum only.

Within the first month, there is already 95 members joined the forum. The founding members that forms the online forum have been actively participating to make the forum more lively from the very beginning. There hasn't been much publicity done to promote this forum but through words of mouth, more and more Alphard owners found the forum and started becoming a member. As of the writing of this post, the forum just passed the 600 members mark after almost 7 months in existence. I believe the number of new members will continue to grow in the coming months. Hopefully we can pass the magical 1,000th member mark before the end of this year.

Currently the forum has members from all over the world. By then I mean other than majority of the members from West Malaysia and Singapore, we have members from East Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Hongkong, New Zealand, Ireland and St Lucia (West Indies/Caribbean - the one and only one Alphard on that island!). Not all members own an Alphard but we do welcome them. Maybe after they learn more about the giant, one day they will become an Alphard owner too.

Currently the online forum has many threads covering various topics including General Discussions, Technical Discussions and the Classified Section. The forum is only accessible by registered member hence general public will not be able to view any of the topics posted in the forum.

The founding members have also been very active in organizing various event trying to attract more members. Since January this year, the following major events were organized for the members:

March 14, 2009 : Day 1 - Gathering of Alphard Owners in Putrajaya; Day 2 - a Day Trip Convoy to Genting Highland
Apr 25th, 2009 : Gathering of Alphard Owners in Awan Besar Rest Area
May 9th, 2009 : Convoy to Kuala Selangor
Jun 6th, 2009 : Gathering of Alphard Owners in Bukit Jalil Golf Driving Range
July 25th, 2009 : Durian Trip to Bentong and Raub.

In between there are also many smaller TT gathering in various locations in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Johor Bahru and Singapore for Alphard owners in those regions. This month we hope the planned TT for Brunei Alphard owners will be a successful event. The next major event is the proposed family day for Alphard owner somewhere in a beach resort down south during the next school holiday.

If you would like to become a member of this fun-fill forum head over to http://www.alphardasiaclub.com/.

Below are photos of some of the major events.