HomeFiat FreakOut 2025

Fiat FreakOut 2025

July 9th – 13th

Chula Vista Resort
The Wisconsin Dells

Fiat Freakout 2025 was hosted by our Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin chapters.

PLANNING COMMITTEE

The Planning Committe was exactly that: the people who got together and laid all the groundwork for Freakout. They secured the hotel, devised the schedule of events, planned the activities, developed the driving routes, etc. Because 3 chapters combined to host Freakout, the first planning meeting was in person, then they occurred online. This was the first Freakout planned primarily online. We think it went pretty danged good! Along with planning the event, you could find most of these members all over Freakout, helping to make sure it ran smoothly. These were the workhorses behind Freakout

Mike Louviere: Planning, plus everything
Dan Henning: Planning, plus everything
Jess Henning: Planning, plus everything
Stephen Dropp: Planning, plus everything
Jen Chung Dropp: Planning, plus photography, photo booth, everything
Vicki Bierlein: Planning, plus program guide, graphics
Nick De Joy: Planning, plus center pieces, buttons
Jeff Hanson: Planning, plus custom key chains, drive lead, show field
Steven Jepson: Planning, plus drive lead, show field
Byran Reiners: Planning, plus supplied photo booth car
Arman Labrada (FCA President): Planning, dinner host, anything needed
Michael Sharpe (FCA VP): planning, drive lead

VOLUNTEERS

The volunteers didn't help plan the event, they helped run it. Members were needed to man the registration booth, lead the drives, help on the show field, and all kinds of other things. Here are the people who lent a hand to help do the work needed during Freakout:

Tim Beeble (FCA Secretary): registrations, everything
Brian Benson: Show field design help
Shannon Gutierrez: Everything
Lisa Gutierrez: Everything
Chuck Collmann: Registration, wash stations, drive lead
Kim Collmann: Registration, drive lead
Tazilon Brenner (Board of Directors): Videographer, show field, Quick Event Setup presentation
Lisa Colom (Board of Directors): Drive lead, show field
Luis Colom: Drive lead, show field
Michael Cusimano: Registration, tech booth, movie night projectionist
Jason “Tiki” Tackett (Board of Directors): drive lead
Alan Piotrowicz: Drive lead
David Arndt: Registration, tech booth
Jeffrey Johnson: Show field
Danny O’Donnell Show field
Karen Gallo (Board of Directors): show field bathroom bus driver
Pat Reiners: Registration

FCA STORE

The FCA Store was somewhat a separate entity in terms of planning and execution. Candy Benson had the lead to obtain product and run the store. The bling you purchased to wear at the Freakout and/or take home are the direct result of her capable stewardship. Here are the members who helped her run the FCA store:

Candy Benson: Store lead, product research and selection
Karen Gallo (Board of Directors): Store help
Luis Colom Store help
Lisa Colom (Board of Directors): Store help
Michelle Kane: Store help

To everyone who helped organize and put on the fantastic Fiat Freakout 2025: Grazie per il tuo duro lavoro!

Tuesday, July 8th

Early Bird Arrivals

Early birds hung out in the parking lot in the evening and talked to Arman (our President) and others.

Wednesday, July 9th

First Full Day of FreakOut

Dells Raceway Park

Located in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, Dells Raceway is a well-known car racing track with a rich history. Opened in 1958, it was originally known as Dells Motor Speedway. The track is a 1/3-mile asphalt oval with 9-degree banking in the corners and 6-degree banking on the straights. DRP hosts a variety of racing events, including the ARCA Midwest Tour, the Mid-American Stock Car Series, and the Alive for Five Series. The track is known for its exciting races and has been described as “what a short track should be”.

Drivers had 3 solo laps per session to show off what they could do with their cars. As multiple vintage cars showed us, you didn't need to be the fastest vehicle on the track to have a great time! FCA Vice President Michael Sharpe recorded the lastest lap of the day in his Alfa Romeo Giulia QV.

Cheese Tour

The Carr Valley Cheese Co. offered a delightful tour experience at their factory in La Valle, Wisconsin. This family- owned company has been making cheese for over a century, using traditional methods that highlight the rich flavors of Wisconsin’s dairy heritage.

During the tour, we got an intimate view of the craftspeople making cheese through observation windows. We arrived early, so we got to see the entire cheese-making process. The tour included a chance to sample a variety of their award-winning cheeses, such as their famous cheddar and unique blends like Cranberry Chipotle Chedda.

The Grateful Shed

Many of us had dinner at the Grateful Shed. The Grateful Shed is a modern mash-up of indoor food trucks and
1960's era hippie groove. Lots of people arrived during the day on Wednesday, so the Shed was a great place
to meet old friends, make new ones, and enjoy some good food and beverage while doing so.

Thursday, July 10th

Option #1: Micro Car Museum and Brewery Tour

Micro Car Museum

This tour started the day off visiting the Midwest MicroCar & Cycle Museum located west of Madison in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. The museum was chock full of tiny means of transportation. As FIAT owners, we could certainly relate to the allure of these small vehicles!

New Glarus Brewing Company

After the micro-cars, it was off to the New Glarus Brewing Company for a self-guided tour of the 15th largest craft brewery in the US.

Minhas Craft Brewery

Of course, after taking a tour of a brewery, some beer tasting is in order. For that, we drove to the Minhas Craft Brewery, the 18th largest craft brewery in the US. Minhas also has a brewery in Canada. Together, the breweries produce 233 craft beers, liqueurs, and wines. Besides the US and Canada, they ship their products to 16 other countries around the world. While here, we got to tour the facility, including their museum of brewery memorabilia. It is the largest such museum in the US! To wrap up the visit, we had a 20 minute tasting session.

Option #2: Wineries Tour

Fawn Creek Winery

The wineries tour started off with a wine tasting at Fawn Creek Winery. Fawn Creek offers wines fermented from a mix of California and Midwest-grown grapes.

Balanced Rock Winery

After Fawn Creek, we ate lunch in the Baraboo Bluff area, then headed south to Balanced Rock Winery. Balanced Rock is a newcomer to the Wisconsin winery scene, opening in 2015.

Wollersheim Winery, Distillery, and Bistro

From Balanced Rock, we drove further south to the Wollersheim Winery, Distillery, and Bistro for our 3rd tasting of the day. The winery first began operation during the Civil War. The limestone house, still standing beside the winery, was built in the 1850s. The winery ceased production in 1899. Then, in 1972, the Wollersheims bought the property and rebuilt the winery business. In 1989, they began making their Prairie Fume, Wisconsin's most popular wine. In 2010, they obtained a distillery license and began making brandy and other spirits. In 2019, the opened a bistro on site, offering visitors lunches

The Merrimac Ferry

On the way back to the Chula Vista Resort, we crossed the Wisconsin river using the Merrimac Ferry. The ferry began as a privately run operation in 1844. The State of Wisconsin took over operation in 1933. The current boat, the Colsac III, pulls itself back and forth across the river using 3 submerged cables.

Option #3: Original Duck Boat Rides

The Original Duck Boat tour was a half-land, half-water scenic tour of parts of Wisconsin Dells, including the Wisconsin River, Dell Creek, Lake Delton and the Dells Scenic Park. The original DUKW boats were used in WWII as amphibious landing craft. Over 2,000 of them were used on D-Day. GIs being GIs, the DUKW boats quickly became known as duck boats and the name has stuck ever since.

A duck boat met us right at the resort, picked us up, and drove downtown to our tour launching point. The tour wound through scenic forests until we splashed down into the Wisconsin River. We motored upstream past beautiful cliffs, then took a short overland jaunt beside Dell Creek to Lake Delton. We entered Lake Delton with a bit of a splash (right all you people sitting in the back?), then returned back to the boat barn through more scenic forests. Another duck boat took us back to the Chula Vista.

Welcome Dinner

Thursday evening at Freakouts always kick off with our Welcome Dinner. By now, most of our guests have arrived, so it was time to all get together and have some fun! The 500 mock up provided photo opportunities for many throughout the evening.

The menu was Wisconsin tailgate style:

Grilled hamburgers, Wisconsin brats, baked beans, coleslaw, potato salad, and watermelon.
With vegetable relishes,dill dip, green leaf lettuce, homemade kettle chips, condiments, and chocolate fudge brownies

Our President, Arman Labrada emceed the dinner. Matt Brannon, from Midwest-Bayless was our guest speaker. After the dinner, many people went outside to hang out together in the parking lot.

Friday, July 11th

The Concorso d'Eleganza

The signature event for every Freakout is the Concorso d'Eleganza. All the cars at Freakout take the show field for one of the largest annual FIAT and Italian car shows in North America. We began staging the cars at 9:00AM and had most of the cars on the show field by 10:00AM. Owners voted on the winners in their respective classes, as well for Best of Show and various other awards.

Saturday, July 12th

Option #1: Autocross

For those of us wanting a competitive driving event, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) set up an autocross course on the Ho Chunk Casino parking lot. Lots of fun was had and several collective inches of rubber were left on the pavement as the more daring of us took on the orange cones of the SCCA layout.

Option #2: Cave of the Mounds

The Cave of the Mounds is a natural limestone cave about an hour drive from the Chula Vista. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1987. The cave has all the stalactite and stalagmite formations you would expect to see in a limestone cave, plus soda straws, flowstones, helictites, cave corals and pearls, splashstones and other geologic formations.

Option #3: House on the Rock

An hour and a half from the Chula Vista is one of the strangest combinations of museum and tourist trap in North America. The House on the Rock began in 1945 when a fellow named Alex Jordan started building a house on a huge rock formation known as the Deer Shleter Rock. Jordan constructed a Japanese-style house. In 1959, he opened it to the public - and then the fun began.

Ever since then, the house has had more and more rooms added to it. Most rooms have themes. One is full of model airplanes. Another, called "Heritage of the Sea" has a huge exhibit of model boats surrounding a massive whale (200' long) battling a giant kraken. "The Music of Yesterday" features amazing automatic music machines. Yet another room houses what they claim is the world's largest indoor carousel. It certainly is big; it has 269 carousel animals (no horses), 192 chandeliers, and over 20,000 lights. Yet, even though it works, no one is allowed to ride it. There are rooms of knights in armor, cars and carriages, and all kinds of other curiosities. Another room, encased in hundreds of glass window panes, juts over over the valley below; a perfect site for amazing pictures. In the middle of the tour, a well placed cafeteria offers food and rest for the hungry and weary. Outside one finds a working water wheel for a mill, a Japanese tea garden, and more. The place is so big, it takes a good 3 hours to tour it all.

To top it all off, not all the displays are not authentic. Many of them were made specifically for the House. Part of the fun of taking the tour is deciding for yourself what is real and what isn't.

If you make it through all the rooms, you are left with somewhat of a sensory overload. No matter what else you think, you leave smiling; knowing you just spent 3 of the most bizarre hours of your life.

The Awards Banquet

As guests filtered in and began mingling before dinner, many took a few moments to go peruse the items up for bid in the silent auction, located on tables on one side of the banquet room.

The menu for the dinner was:

Casear salad, grilled flank steak, chicken marsala, Atlantic cod asiago provencal, overn raosted baby red rosemary potaoes, milti-grain rice pilaf, fresh baked rolls, and cakes for dessert.

John Jacob emceed the festivites with his usual comedic skill. One of the first things we had to determine once we were seated was who was the Smartest Table in the Room? Tables colloborated to answer trivia questions focused on the world of Fiat and its sister companies. Over the years, the questions have become more and more difficult. You walk into the room thinking you know a fair amount about Italian automobiles. You leave humbled.

The location of next year's Freakout was also revealed: Gettysburg, PA.

Eventually, we got to the reason for the dinner: the awards! Club President Arman Labrada and Iowa Chapter leader, Mike Louviere, presented the awards. Winners of the annual FCA awards were announced, followed by the winners of the various classes of cars in the Concorso d'Eleganza. Of course, the biggest moment was the announcement of the Best of Show. This year, that honor went to Pietro Arena and his 1963 Ghia 1500.

A video of the complete awards presentation is posted below for any who want to see all the various awards.

After the banquet was over, for many of us, it was back outside for one last night of parking lot camaraderie. Sunday always comes too soon at every Freakout. The parking lot provided one last chance to share our friendships, fun, family, food, and FIATS.

Sunday July 13th

Sunday Breakfast and Raffle

At 8AM Sunday morning, those of us who were not already headed home met in the banquet room again for a breakfast and raffle. For breakfast, we had a buffet of:

Scrambled eggs, deep dish apple bread French toast casserole, smoked bacon, sausage patties, breakfast potatoes,
freshly cut fruit, muffins and breakfast breads.

Orange and apple juices, freshly brewed regular and decaffeinated coffee and hot teas.

As we ate breakfast, the winning raffle tickets were announced. If your number was called, you went up and selected whatever prize you wanted. Don't be slow though! The next number was being called right behind you and all prizes were first claimed, first won.

After the raffle, final good byes were made and everyone headed back home, ready to repeat it all again in 2026 at Gettysburg.