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. [Read more…] about Fiat FreakOut and the Fiat Club America