Lisboa, 17 September, 2016

To celebrate their 3rd anniversary, the Clube Scuderia Rampante in Portugal held a gathering at the Palace Hotel Monte Real, on Saturday 17 September 2016. This is a luxury Spa Hotel located in the Monte Real Thermal Park, which is about 5kms inland from the Atlantic coast, approximately midway between Lisbon and Porto, just off the A17 highway in the Leiria region. As there is no official Ferrari Club in Portugal, the idea for the club was the brainchild of a Ferrari owner in Porto, Rui Gigante, who decided to form a small club for Ferrari friends, to hold events, make visits to classic car shows and to organise tours, where they could enjoy their cars with likeminded people and their families. Once the seed was sown, he enlisted the help of other friends, Vitor Sousa, João Madeira and Erik Ulrix, and together they have expanded the club, so that now it has about fifty members, and although they feel it could expand further, they feel that around 100 members would be ideal with the present structure, as they don’t want to lose the close ambience that it currently enjoys.

The day’s activities comprised of a leisurely meeting and display of the cars at the Palace Hotel, which was followed by a gourmet lunch there, whilst the main feature of the gathering was a visit to the Monte Real military air base, or to give it its official title, Air Force Base No. 5. This is located only a short drive from the hotel, and is one of Portugal’s front line bases with squadrons of F16 – Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft based there. The event was well received by members, with a total of 25 Ferraris turning up, plus a couple of Maseratis as family back-up transport, with 68 people in total in attendance. The cars in attendance were what I would classify as mainly modern variants, that is to say, from the 308 era, although saying that examples of this model can be 40+ years old now. They ran through 328s, 348s, F355s, 360s, 430s to the 458 in V8 cars and from a 400, through Testarossa, 456 and 612 in the V12 models. The Sunday was a public open day at the air base, so the club left three of their cars at the base for display during that day, to add to the spectacle for visitors.

Keith Bluemel
10/2016