Reviews
Reviews
1-4 OCTOBER 1998
LANCIA CLUB OSTERREICH MEETING
8.Int. Treffen Vorarlberg
by Bernd C. Haeussler
The Austrian meeting was one of the best meetings where I have ever been with respect to the organization .
Rughly 25 cars were present, mine was the only Gamma coupe and by the way the Lancia Club of Austria has only 3 members, which own Gamma cars. The Lancia cars were mostly youngtimers (Fulvia, Beta; Delta, Flaminia...) the 2 oldest
cars were an Aurelia and an Appia from the fifties. Aproximately 70% from the participants came from Austria, 15% from Italy and 15% from Germany. Andrea and Gabriella were there and also Piero and Alessandra. Walter Passarini, who also intended to visit the meeting, had a problem with the cooling system of the Fulvia (probably radiator) and he had to return back to Italy before arriving at Bregenzer Wald.
The weather was still acceptable. I had expected heavy rain but finally it only rained once in a while and sometimes we had even sun.
For me the meeting started on Thursday night at the bar. I didn*%t know anybody except Piero (Andrea came on Saturday) and it was very easy to get in contact with the people from the Austrian club. The atmosphere in general was very friendly and the selected foods were really excellent. For instance we had a 5 course Gourme diner on Friday and on Saturday we had "Kasspatzle" at a specialized restaurant. Kasspatzle are special handmade noodles with cheese and onions, the recipe comes from North-East Austria and South-West Germany.
The program was made in a way that it offered something for every taste. Itseemed that they had thought a lot in advance about how to please everybody. On Friday we drove through the mountains from the morning till the evening. It wasvery much driving especially if you take into account that many people had driven the whole day before in order to get to the meeting. But it was fun, we drove up a hill stopped, enjoyed the sight and then we drove down to the next stop where local people had prepared some drinks and snacks. Like this we made 4 or 5 mountains, the total was between 250 and 300 km.
On Saturday we made another hill but then we drove to Bregenz and for the afternoon you had the choice between several cultural activities.
On Friday and Saturday we also did some competitions: In two competions you had to drive up the hill with a constant average speed (for instance: distance 11.7 km, time 20 min, average speed 35 km/h). The one who came closest to these values won. I was really bad in this kind of competion because my odometer did not comply with the distance they had indicated, but several other people made similar experience, so it was not a problem of the Gamma. The Austrian people won these 2 competitions. A third competion we did was a rear driven slalom. One had to drive backwards and a second person had to walk in reverse direction. I drove with the Gamma and a partner, which the Austrians gave me walked. Since my partner walked very well and the coordination between us was very good we won.
All the winners, second and third got nice cups - another example for the good organization. By the way loosers and people with bad luck got oilfilters as a trophy, so there was also a big sens of humor. Another example for the humour of the Austrians were bottles of alcohol (grappa or something similar) which were distributed among the participants. The bottles were declared as "high octan mountain gasoline" followed by the slogan "you have to breath it in the open carburators at the first revolution of your crankshaft".
So you can see that the meeting was very entertaining. I left on Sunday morning and arrived at home in the late afternoon.
Date for the next meeting of the Lancia Club of Austria: 27.08.99
At the Austrian meeting a member of the Austrian club offered a Gamma coupe for sale. And since the car was standing close to Bregenz, me and the current owner went there to see it. The guy himself is a Fulvia enthusiast and he had rescued the car from getting rotten on a lawn. The former owner must have been a jerk because he had treated the car very bad. He had made a fire in front of the car and the heat damaged the head lights, both fenders and the bumper. As a consequence it seems that it had started to burn a little bit inside the engine compartment, so all the plastic parts (even the housing of the airflowmeter !) are damaged.
The car is a 2.5ie from 84 with automatic transmission! Beside the damages the car is in relative good condition. He didn*%t know if the engine is broken or not, so I would assume it is broken. Of course it is not possible to restore it for reasonable costs but it can perfectly be used for spare parts. The price for about 1.5 Mio LIT is to my opinion too high and I told him. If you are interested call him and negociate with him another price. I got a good impession about the guy and furthermore he has to get rid of the car soon.
Therefore I guess he will make you a big discount. You can refer to my visit at his garage.
The name is: Ernst Scheiterbauer +43-5574-71125 (Austria)