Featured: Davide Cappadonna
Who actually is Davide?
"Cars and football have always been my greatest passions! I used to work in a body shop for 10 years, restoring mainly modern cars until 2004. Then I spotted a coral-red Fiat 500 L in one of the main streets of my hometown, which reminded me of an old photo that I will show you one day. After short negotiations, I paid the modest sum of EUR 300 and I brought the little two-cylinder to my repair shop. At that point, I could have imagined anything, except that a new world would open up to me with the Fiat 500! This little car stirred a wave of enthusiasm among the repair shop’s regular and walk-in customers, so that I restored a variety of differently coloured models of Fiat 500s for three years until all related photos were published in my very first blog ‘500platinum’, which is still remembered by so many.
Why “500platinum”? Platinum is a very rare and precious metal. Platinum jewellery is intended to last forever, but it needs the right care to preserve its splendour. I would say that comparing the 500s I restored to this very precious metal “hits the nail on the head.”
In 2007, I was offered a job opportunity that gave me important stability, but had nothing to do with my previous knowledge and activities. I thought about it for a while, but not for too long. I was determined to radically change my work habits, but not my passion.
It was also in 2007 when the Fiat 500 Club Italia of Garlenda (SV), which is the largest club worldwide with its focus on one single car model, appointed me as its trusted representative and trustee in Catania – after a brief interlude as “Commissioner of the Historical Model Register”, from which I “inherited” the task of continuously researching of the history of Fiat 500 models.
In September 2006, I organised a meeting of friends who were enthusiastic about the little Fiat 500s, where finally 90 vehicles and their drivers/crews came together. This became the International Etna Meeting, an event that attracts 200 to 300 historic Fiat 500s to the area around Mount Etna every year.
In 2019, I was elected to the board of Fiat 500 Club Italia and became its national secretary and contact person for the Sicily region in the following two years. In the age of social media, I keep meeting car enthusiasts from all over the world with whom I can compare my knowledge and learn new things. One thing is sure: You never stop learning, right?"
