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

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

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

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

Saturday, July 12th

Option #1: Autocross

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.