This time I got to Assen early, because last year I arrived at 10:15 at it took me over half an hour to get to the paddock … just to show you that Viva Italia is a very popular event in the Netherlands, thousands of Italian car and bike enthusiasts show up every year, showing the elite in tuning and to see what other automotive artwork is on display in the paddock area.
And despite the weather not being too nice (it didn’t rain fortunately) there were a lot of people and cars at Assen, a very impressive Lamborghini Club Nederland stand showed a multitude of great cars, ranging from the classic 400 GT 2+2, Islero, Espada and Jarama right up to the legendary Countach, the Diablo and the recent Murciélago and Gallardo, also two Urraco showed up, a stunning bright Verde Chiaro finished one … which was actually the first time the car went on the road after being restored by it’s owner over a period of four years.
Many people were walking between these super cars, but it weren’t all ‘Raging Bull’ on the stand, there were a very rare Porsche GT and a Bugatti EB110 present too drawing as much attention as the rest of these rarely seen cars.
Viva Italia is an event that will show you the most exotic cars around, cars you don’t encounter on the public road every day, and what’s even better, they are taken onto the famous TT Circuit … with passengers.
So you can have the experience of actually being driven in an exotic Lamborghini on the circuit, something I can only encourage you to do, it’s totally different to driving in any other car.
Naturally not all cars were driven on the circuit, some were kept on the paddock while others were racing on the track, not everybody wants to drive on the circuit in their pride and joy, you never know, and most of these cars are not used to being pushed to the limits a circuit can put them in … so some prefer to show there car while others take great pleasure in going ‘full blast’ on an enclosed circuit, something that can rarely be done on the public roads these days (without a massive speeding ticket I mean).
Taking a walk around the various stands you could enjoy some of the finest sound tuning for your car, specialized companies were present offering the very best high fidelity systems for inside your car, naturally this isn’t used in a Lamborghini … the engine makes the best sound on this planet right ?! But still, if you would like to have some great sounding music in you could find it at Assen.
Right next to the scale car shop, which drew my to it by some unknown force and made me spend way too much money again on the a few Lamborghini models I didn’t own yet … I’ll have to find some more space now to display them.
Again Viva Italia was awesome, there were a lot of Lamborghinis, I’ve met some great fellow enthusiasts and had a good time talking about our mutual passion, listening to stories from actual owners and just having fun in a very relaxed environment … can’t wait until next year when I can return to Assen to do it all over again.
