On Sunday 26th June in Garda, a beautiful town located on the eastern side of the famous, picturesque European lake, more than four hundred fans held a traditional annual gathering of Fiat Puntos, the fourth edition of an event organised by Punto Racing Club.

More than one hundred and eighty Fiat Punto owners brought their own cars, from the very cleanest, standard Punto 55 to the most hyper-vitaminized Punto GT, with more than 300bhp on tap. Everyone in Garda shared that one ideal: the passion to tune their own car with the remarkable aim to make it an unique, head-turning model.

Any aesthetic modification is permitted and favoured by this gathering from deep, ground-hugging front bumpers, huge rear spoilers seeming able to created more airload than Michael Schumacher F1 Ferrari F2005, Playstation consoles fitted behind almost every door, swages of TFT displays able to display realistic graphics, half meter sized subwoofers never envisioned to be squeezed into the rear of a Punto when Fiat's designers created the car.

The event was a feast for everybody: local restaurants and bars were packed, while the local tourist agency welcomed this event, which attracts so many Italian young drivers who mingled with the queues of calm Eurpean tourists, walking along the famous shores of the world-renown Lake Garda.

The Punto Racing Club was itself set up in Italy four years ago to cater for all owners of Fiat Puntos who were passionate about their cars. The event has now quickly grown, in that a number of the young drivers came from a spread of European countries.
 

The Punto Sportivo Club members' drove their own Fiat Puntos in a caravan from the Netherlands, and it's was delightful to see a passion for small Fiats spreading outside the Italian borders."The Dutch guys were not the only crews from abroad: some special Punto GT owners came also from Switzerland and Germany", commented one of the Punto Racing Club founder members.

"When they come in Italy, our local members are a little bit envious of their German or Swiss Fiat cousins, because their car and road regulations, their national laws allow them to install almost anything on their Punto. Special exhaust systems, 17 or 18 inch size light-alloy wheels, or mechanical modifications are allowed in their countries" he added, before concluding, "In Italy the aftermarket tuners industry has never had enough strength to pressurise the Transport Ministry in order to align Italian law to that of most our our modern European counterparts, which is disappointing because several of the leading aftermarket tuners are Italian, like Sparco, O.Z. Racing, Tecnomagnesio, Alessio, Cadamuro and so on."

by Marco Tenuti