Customer Feature: Fernando Garetto

Our customer feature this month comes from one of our Chilean customers who owns several vintage Volvos. We left Fernando’s story unedited to preserve the international flavor.

By Fernando Garettto

My experience with Vintage Volvo cars started in the sixties when my father bought a P1800S 1965 from Divolvo-Chile (Chile Volvo importer), My father teach me to drive with this car and some years later he gived me this car in my 17th birthday.

My father, Humberto Garetto, was a great mechanical entusiast. He teach me to repare this car since I haved 8 years. For this reason I learned to repare each mechanical part of this car For this reason I begin to be a fanatic of Volvo cars from that years, models 544, 122 and P1800. I have 2 PV544, one is a B16 model 6 volts and the second is my vintage race car, photos enclosed. Also I have a 1965 P1800S, 1966 123GT, 1967 122 station and P210 1960.

In Chile we many 122 models because we set in Chile the first Volvo assembling plant out of sweden finishing 3.000 Amazons a year. Since that period time I have being always driving Volvos, so when C.A.S.V., local sports cars club, organized vintage car races I didn’t hesitate to participate.

My elected model was a PV544 for its strong racing heritage both in Chile and Europe, low weight  car and great history of racing. The car was fully updated with IPD camshaft, suspension bushings and several improvements for engine perfomance and handling. The PV have always being among the leading group of the 2.000cc Historic cars, competing with BMW 2002, Alfa Romeo Sprint and Volvo 242 among others. The club (www.casvitacura.cl) gathers more than 80 vintage racing cars of various brands. To share my racing experience I am member of local Volvo vintage club (www.clubvolvochile.cl ) where more than 60 classic Volvo owners actively organize several events. The last events was cruise the Los Andes Mountains for go to a meet with Argentina Volvo club in Mendoza, the last April.