Fiat FreakOut and the Fiat Club America

By Philippe H. Defechereux © 2018
All photos courtesy Fiat Club America

“Timing is Everything.” Here’s a ubiquitous American adage implying that if you start something new at a time of related good news, the wind will blow strongly behind your sails. And vice versa.

So, how about starting a club of American Fiat owners, fans or both in 1983, the very year Fiat of North America announced it was pulling out of the United States market for good, and still be going from strength to strength 35 years later? That would be like defying gravity. Yet one Fiat hyper-enthusiast from Pennsylvania by the name of Bobb (with double b) Rayner set out to do just that.

And lo and behold, as you are now reading this wondrous story 35 years later, Bobb and hundreds of kindred friends just returned home from the biggest annual four-day event the Fiat Club has ever staged held at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. For magically, the organized love fest for Fiat begun in 1983 America never stopped; it only grew and grew, against all odds. So here is the amazing story of the Fiat Club America.

Fiat in America

First there was the Fiat car company, of course, one of the world’s first, officially founded on July 11, 1899 in Turin, Italy. A certain Giovanni Agnelli was one of its leading founding members. The United States was never far off the founders’ ambitions; the Fiat Automobile Co. was established in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1908, producing its first luxury car only a year later. Sales were decent but after the First World War, it was clear that was too much competition in the luxury car field, and on the low-end Ford was such an overriding mass-market player in America, it made no sense to even try to challenge the Dearborn giant from Europe. The very few Fiats sold in America after 1918 were all made in Turin and the Poughkeepsie plant was sold.

Fiat officially returned to the United States in the 1950s along with other, increasingly popular European imports, offering models such as its Fiat 500, the 600 Multipla and the 1100. After reaching a peak of just above 100,000-unit sales in 1975, endemic quality and reliability problems began to hurt the brand badly, battered hard by the Japanese competition then sweeping into the small-car segment. By 1982, Fiat’s total U.S. sales were down to an unsustainable 14,100 cars. Still, the company had gained some die-hard enthusiasts with sporty models such as the 124 Spider and the X1/9.

And one of those was Bobb Rayner, then a dark-haired young man with a resolute face and an amicably convincing manner of speech. Whether or not the fact that his mother was of proud Italian stock mattered, Bobb won’t say, but the first car he bought was a Fiat 128 sedan. He thoroughly enjoyed its ride and demeanor. Next, wishing to get a sportier model, he acquired a striking wedge-shaped X1/9; he soon fell in love with Fiat beyond reason.

Have club, no dealers

Undeterred by the company’s pull-out formally announced in March 1983, Bobb started at once seeking out kindred Fiat lovers with a view to keeping the flame alive. That is when he heard of a group in New York that had named itself “Fiat Club of America” and managed to send four typewritten newsletters a year to a national mailing list of Fiat fans. It did not take Bobb long to go meet the founder and start tossing around various new wild ideas. In short order, a small group of similarly Fiat-crazed people from the Liberty Bell State of Pennsylvania joined forces to start their own club. In their youthful love-struck spirit, they decided to name it the “Fiat Lancia Underground” (“FLU”), since no affiliation with Fiat S.p.A. was conceivable.

Freaked Out

By mid-summer, along with another die-hard Fiat fan named Dwight Varnes, the aborning club managed to organize its first weekend event for Fiat enthusiasts at Pocono Raceway, in conjunction with the SCCA. When it came to finding a catchy name for it, and based on the sorry status of the brand, they figured only “freaks” could still love Fiats, so they boldly baptized the event “The Fiat Freakout Gathering”. And sure enough it hit the target, the event proving a fun and popular success beyond expectations. This was concrete proof that the Fiat brand and its cars, in spite of “buyer abuse with abandon,” had formed a deep, lasting emotional connection with a diverse group of people all deeply enamored of their Italian automobiles. The next 35 years would prove how strong that emotional bond was.

Indeed, and against all rational odds, the club grew quickly, using word-of-mouth and issuing their own newsletter (still hand-typed, then copied until 1986) several times a year, announcing events, relating happy member stories and providing helpful tips on maintenance and repairs. Still-active Fiat parts vendors soon begged to advertise in the publication – permission quickly granted! In short order, local chapters were being established throughout the country’s Eastern half, including Detroit, Western New York State, North Carolina and even Southern Ontario in Canada. Today 25 chapters are active in North America.

FLU Pandemic

The cornerstone event binding this all together was always and remains the annual “Fiat FreakOut, or “FFO” in the club parlance. Amazingly, it has been held every summer since the first installment in 1983. Pennsylvania’s Pocono International Raceway remained the venue for the first seven years, then in 1989 the FFO moved to the Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. By 1995, with the continued growth and geographic expansion of the membership, the FFO was staged gradually farther afield: first Poughkeepsie, NY, for obvious historical reasons, then, among others, Osage Beach, MO; Detroit, MI; and more recently Nashville, TN and even Chicago (2016). In recent years, attendance has ranged between 300 and 400 room nights. A FFO weekend is masterly planned as a four-day event full of pleasurably structured activities, with members fully free to participate or relax as their wishes dictate.

Though catching and impressive, the pictures featured here tell only part of the story. To quote the Club’s website: “The weekend usually starts on a Thursday with a special event; then Friday the action really gets going with an activity, a short drive, or pool party, then dinner. On Saturday, it’s the big Concours Car Show, then a short afternoon drive. After a short break, it’s the big Saturday night banquet party! Sunday morning is a raffle prize breakfast, then another closeout event activity before the drive home to reality once again.” As Bobb Rayner likes to say: “It’s better than Christmas!” It seems he and his many compatriots actually started an on-going Italian FLU epidemic, this one just harmless and fun-giving, but nonetheless still infectious, though in a joyous way: countless new friendships and relationships were formed, and are still being formed, some even leading to happy marriages! Such actual stories began to be broadly proclaimed at the 25th anniversary FFO staged at the Pocono Manor in 2008.

Then in 2009, Fiat suddenly arrived back in America after the late Sergio Marchionne famously and craftily arranged the Fiat-Chrysler merger in Detroit and Washington. Great hopes of a magnificent renaissance with factory support stirred the heart of all members. Bobb Rayner even made sure early on to rename his original creation “Fiat Club America” and secured formal legal approval from Fiat to use that name. Alas, the new Fiat-Chrysler CEO put more emphasis on merging the Italian and American manufacturing operations, and strongly boosting the Chrysler truck and Jeep brands, than on firmly re-establishing Fiat – and subsequently Alfa Romeo – in America. All agree today that the Fiat re-introduction, despite the appeal of successive versions of the new 500, was botched. Alfa Romeo is now the last remaining hope for a visible “made-in-Italy” Fiat Group car presence, but given the imperious competition, it remains a very risky bet.

All this however, will not damp the enthusiasm of Fiat Club members. Having lived and thrived without any new Fiats on American roads for a quarter century, they’re happy nowadays to be driving fully modern cars with the Fiat logo shining high on the fascia. And most keep their old ones too. Last but not least, as we hinted in our introduction, they just experienced their biggest and most “magical” Fiat FreakOut ever in Florida, graced by the elegant presence of Mrs. Anneliese Abarth, the widow of Carlo Abarth. We’ll have an exclusive snapshot review of the event in a future issue of VeloceToday.

In the third verse of Genesis, God famously said “Let there be light”, and there was light. In Latin those four words translate into just two: “Fiat Lux”. Well, there has been a bright light thrown upon all Fiat car enthusiasts in America since 1983. It is not about to dim anytime soon.

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Find the Club on Facebook: FIAT Club America

Acknowledgement: Bobb Rayner, who provided much of the basic information for this article, would like the following people to be recognized for their active support over the years, without which this wonderful story could never have lasted: Scott Hill and Jim Aitken, the first two presidents of the club over a span of 17 years, and their staff, who were instrumental in nurturing its growth and expansion; John Montgomery, the third president and the one with the longest tenure: 18 years; he spearheaded a number of FFO events himself; Doug VonKoenig, current club president who fully supported and helped conclude the choice of Orlando, Florida as the site for FFO 2018; Brett Melancon, who took over Ricambi, the club’s unique magazine, as Editor/Publisher in 1997 and turned it into an excellent full-color glossy; and finally Bob Zecca, recent founder of the New Jersey club chapter, and the man responsible for arranging the attendance of Mrs. Abarth in Orlando.

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