1981 Spider 2000 More Photos »
Like classic Austin-Healeys, MGs and Triumphs of the bell-bottom era, Fiats could be lovely to look at and delightful on the road. In particular, they were loads of fun when driven with urgency — ideally with the engine screaming at maximum revs and with minimal regard to the tires’ limits of adhesion.
But they also carried the stigma of being unable to return home from dinner and a movie without an alternator dying, a fuel pump expiring or a head gasket blowing. Worse yet, many of the cars that Fiat sold in the United States before pulling up stakes in 1983 tended to age badly, suffering from poor paint, metastatic rust and fragile trim.
The reputation for shoddy quality may be the product of a few historical factors: pressing demand in postwar Italy for low-cost cars; a desperate need to export as the country rebuilt; and trade restrictions that kept high-quality Japanese cars out of the home market.
Bill Baker was the public relations director for Fiat North America in 1978-83, and he was a busy man. During his tenure, the federal government issued a highly unusual recall for the Fiat 850 — going back 10 years — for rust problems. Mr. Baker also had to cope with dealers who had never received service manuals in English for some models.
The 1979 introduction of what was supposed to be a world-beating economy hatchback, the Strada, instead turned out to be a swan song: that car was the last Fiat-branded product in the United States. Among the Strada’s myriad faults, Mr. Baker recalls, was an engine compartment that got so hot the electric cooling fan, controlled by a thermostat, would never shut off. It simply stayed on until it drained the battery. Even impressive gas mileage — the E.P.A. highway rating was 38 m.p.g. — would not sustain the troublesome Strada.
Jonathan Stein, an automotive historian who comes from a family of Fiat owners, recalls a particular 1981 Fiat 131 sedan bought after sitting on a dealer’s lot for a year. “The car already had body rust when we bought it,” he said. “Every six months, we had to return it to the dealer to have the rust repaired.”
My mother, Joyce Sass, recalls her 1981 Spider 2000, painted a pretty shade of light blue, as the “bring it on by” car. It earned the name because that was the phrase consistently offered by the service manager of Archway Imports in St. Louis, in response to her latest description of the car’s malfunctions.
Some Fiat owners did get excellent service from their cars. Rich Williams of Santa Barbara, Calif., owned a 1976 124 Spider from 1986 until 2001. “I bought it not because I had any interest in Fiats per se, but simply because I was a poor grad student,” he said. “It was cheap transportation, and the top went down.”
Mr. Williams’s care for his 124 was not exactly that of a doting owner. “I rarely changed the oil, and I bought the cheapest parts for it possible,” he said. “Still, I got about 125,000 miles out of it. It only broke down on me once.
“I did go through numerous convertible tops, though. When they wore out, I just drove to the manufacturer in L.A., bought a top and replaced it myself.”
Mr. Baker said he thought that at the time Fiat left the United States in 1983, the company’s management simply didn’t understand how the American market was evolving. “We kept telling them that quality was becoming the most important attribute to American buyers, and their response was, ‘How good is good enough?’” he said.
Still, Fiats were often a darling of the enthusiast press. In 1967, Road & Track called the Fiat 850 coupe “one of the handsomest, best-balanced designs ever seen on a small car.” And of the 1100R sedan tested the same year, it said, “Despite the car’s first purpose as economy transportation, it can deliver more sheer fun than almost any small sedan on the market.”
Little has changed in this regard. John Montgomery, president of Fiat Lancia Unlimited, a club based in Coldwater, Mich., said vintage Fiat sports cars had a junior-exotic appeal, giving enthusiasts of average means a taste of the Ferrari experience.
In addition to common ownership, Fiat and Ferrari have often shared the services of styling houses like Pininfarina and Bertone, Mr. Montgomery points out. Little surprise, then, that the Fiat 124 Spider bears more than a passing resemblance to the Ferrari 275 GTS, and the wedge profile of the Fiat X 1/9 can be seen in the Ferrari 308 GT/4.
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