Dave Vance’s 1969 Chevrolet Corvette cranks out 400 horsepower and weighs only 3,200 pounds, thanks to a diet that did away with unwanted fat – like the grille, the front bumper and even the radio. With the car’s open exhaust headers thundering, he drives it in competitive events around the Midwest, including one where he hits about 135 mph down the straightaway.

But don’t think of the Ankeny real estate broker as a fanatic. After all, Vance has only one vintage Corvette. “One of my very good racing friends has six,” he said. Vance belongs to the Corvette Club of Iowa, and reports that it’s not unusual for a CCI member to own several examples of Chevy’s classic sports car. “Some have 10 or more,” he said.

The club was founded in 1962 and has close to 100 members. Think it sounds like a guy thing? Actually, says Vance, close to half of the members are women. “There are some very strong female drivers,” he said. “There are a number of husband-and-wife teams, and in some of those, each has their own car.”

Vance, who has owned and operated the Alpha One commercial real estate brokerage in Ankeny since 1998, joined CCI when he bought his first Corvette in 1974. “It’s just really a blast,” he said. “Some of the club members like the cars from when they were in high school, some don’t care; some wanted one in high school, now they have it.”

Owning a Corvette isn’t like owning a piece of art, though; it takes some effort. When it’s time to compete at Pacific Junction in Southwest Iowa, for example, “we know where all the parts stores are over there,” Vance said. “These are high-maintenance machines.”

Club President Dave Howard, a finance department supervisor at the Des Moines Water Works, says you can find a Corvette event just about every weekend of the year. “They’re not all speed events,” he said. “There are rallies, people’s choice car shows, judged concourse shows – that’s where judges go over your Corvette with a fine-toothed comb – and even a nonsensical event once in a while. They’re called Funkhanas, and they can be just about anything; some require involving the car.”

For example, the annual weekend event in Chariton includes a Funkhana that has participants parking their Corvettes on the town square and then heading off on foot for a scavenger hunt.

The next event on the 2006 schedule, by the way, is a Valentine’s Day get-together Feb. 18 at Rube’s Steakhouse and Meat Co. in Waukee, located near exit 117 of Interstate 80.

In Polk, Warren, Dallas and Madison counties combined, Howard says, more than 6,000 Corvettes are registered. CCI and two other Central Iowa groups that aren’t affiliated with the National Council of Corvette Clubs have a total of maybe 500 members. So there are plenty more potential members close at hand. But CCI doesn’t recruit.

“I don’t like to point people toward our club unless they have some interest in competition,” Howard says. “They’re likely to be with us a year or two and then leave.” They might be looking for an organization like the Cyclone Corvette Club in Ames, which likes long road trips, Howard said, or the Warren County Corvette Club, which tends to do short trips and dinner cruises.

Howard has owned his 1974 ’Vette for 12 years, having bought it from previous club president Dick Mathern of Runnells. “He got tired of dragging me around to look at junkers and sold me one that he had in storage,” Howard says.

He runs it in the same class as Vance, one of many classes in a system designed to provide happy homes for Corvettes of any vintage and any modification. These factors make a huge difference. The car’s horsepower has soared and handling characteristics have been refined over the decades.

Howard got to drive another guy’s 2004 Corvette Z06 at the annual Osceola event. “The difference,” he said, “isn’t even describable.”