Official Newsletter of the Midwest's Premier Car Club of Popular Italian Cars
Articles	Fall 2007 Newsletter	Information

Italian CarFest in Grapevine, TX

by
Ron Conlon  

Once again the Italian car club south of us put on a wonderful car show for the owners of Italian cars and an appreciative public. Fiats and Lancias make up an important segment of the event and the Roamin' Chariots were there in sizeable numbers. Check out http://italiancarfest.com/ for a full story. This year like the last one, the editor had the pleasure to drive one of Jim Chandler's show winners down I-35 and onto the winners' circle so he could enter another gem of a car. This year I drove a very classy Lancia Flaminia while he brought out a freshly restored Fiat Abarth 1000OT. My spider was taken by a visitor, Graeme Gardner, from Canada so it could claim to have been present at all 5 ICFs since 2002.

Lancia Flaminia of Jim Chandler

Fiat Abarth 1000OT

The ride down to Texas was not without some drama. The Flaminia steadily lost power from a dying fuel pump but was saved by a spare fuel pump showing up in Johnathan's kit. This got the car there and home but it never did run at its best. Jim had his own problems that required some repair to his truck before arriving late to the party with the OT in tow.

Carfest opens with a grand cocktail party at The Gaylord Resort. We all shuttled over from our motel for the festivities. Graeme and I then hired ourselves out to organizer, Jerry Lee Philips, to place signs along the routes to the show field. This we finished well after midnight and probably just in time for Jerry to start his big day. I doubt he slept much. The RC's were all up early, as well, to clean off the travel grime and tart up the cars.

This year a Best Spider Challenge was a main event at ICF and four Fiat 124 based spiders were selected from around the country to compete. Owners dragged their cars from California, Washington and North Carolina to represent their regions. Denise Burchette of the FLU club won but it was a hard choice. This event will only do good things for the values of all vintage Fiats.

A roadside repair.

Our club members took home some prizes

Delmer Teet first place Lancia

Jim Chandler first place Fiat and winner circle

Jim Wagner winner circle

Richard Crumpe second place Fiat/Pininfarina Spider

The Roamin' Chariots group picture.

Left to right are Jim Chandler with Lancia Flaminia, John Houchin with Fiat X1/9, Jim Wagner with Fiat Spider, the Abarth 1000OT, Jonathan Rodebush with Fiat Spider, Ron Conlon with Fiat Spider, Mike Greer with Fiat Spider, Gary Blessing with Lancia Scorpion, Delmer Teet with Lancia Scorpion. Missing are Gary Blessing sr. and Richard Crumpe with Pininfarina Spider.

The latest news from Jerry Lee and Bob is that this ICF is the last one. They are to be commended and thanked for putting on five marvelous car shows and doing so much for the Fiat and other Italian makes. I expect to see Jerry enjoying the more relaxed lifestyle of the participant and less the organizer.

Giro d'Arkansas

Mike Greer once again has organized our fall driving event to Arkansas.  This year we found a motel in Russellville and drove a fine curvaceous circuit north of I-40.  The route has been used as a serious bicycle course so the pavement was good with many a challenging turn of the compass.           

The cars all performed well with many driving the secondary highways to enjoy the fine weather.  Jim, the navigator, Wagner passed some of the driving to Paul who managed to not only run the car dry of fuel but they got lost as well.  The car rolled to stop within feet of a gas pump.  He says the car will take just over 11 gallons.  Russellville is also a dry county so a call to Mike from the motel fixed that problem and evening meetings were happy.   The service people in town must be mentioned.   They were pleasant and welcoming.  I would go back again.But… enough of my blathering.

8 Spiders ran the route

Paul, Ron and Johnathan with Csaba and Karen in the background

Bill and his navigator Ron from Iowa

Ron looking lost and thinking about the swishing noise

Bill's beautiful yellow suffered a severe stumble

In the good hands of Mike, Csaba and Jim the plug wires were replaced with some spares from Ron. Tony's yellow in the background was also very nice and fast, too. Bill's car was happy with the wires and reliably took him the 700 miles home.

Ron's return from Arkansas had its moment when his car made one last swish on I -35 and threw off a very frayed fan belt. As luck would have it team Rodenbush was close behind and he had a spare. Ten minutes later they were headed for Oklahoma City on highway 9 through the high plains landscape.