Monthly Archives: April 2020

Fiat

1973 Fiat 128 Coupe

As we touched on yesterday, the North American automotive players struggled in the 1970s to adapt to changing consumer demands. The Japanese automakers ultimately succeeded in taking on the domestics, but Italian car companies had a similar advantage - rather than shrinking down their offerings and downsizing their powertrains, they were simply loading their current products onto ships and delivering them to the North American market.

The Fiat 128 Coupe is a reasonably sized vehicle for personal use in Italy, where a contemporary Mustang would have met difficulty in navigating narrow and crowded streets. And its 1100cc SOHC 4-cylinder was a continuation of Fiat engineering success, rather than a rework of something from the European division, as was the Mustang's Lima 4-cylinder. Though less appreciated among enthusiasts today, the 128 brought front wheel drive to the market back in 1969, when American cars were roasting their rear tires with power from 800cfm double pumper carbs.

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Lancia, Pininfarina, Zagato

1979 Lancia Beta Zagato

Lancia dabbled in Greek letter naming of its vehicles at the turn of the century, making its way through a succession of Greek letters before moving on to the Roman roads naming convention. Among our favorite of the old Greek models was the Lambda, a 70mph 1920s unitary body feat of design and engineering. The Roman road names began (we believe) with the Astura, and continued through the end of Fulvia production.

The reintroduction of Greek letters was accompanied by a Fiat takeover and a new lust, by those responsible for the corporate coffers at least, to introduce scaled production and profitability. Lancia vehicles had, to this point, been the dreams of engineers, and sold with high prices to compensate for low production. With Fiat at the helm, the Beta series was introduced with lofty production targets and reduced development spending; understandably, many Lancia engineers walked out during this transition.

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Alfa Romeo, Pininfarina

1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider

Alfa Romeo broke into the mainstream with its 1900 offering, which couple a unibody construction and a modern twin cam engine with modern production methods. The resulting sales propped up the brand sales enough to allow for the development of even more affordable options. The resulting car was the Giulietta series, which proved to be the most attainable Alfa Romeo to that point.

Early Giulietta fell into the 750 series, while later examples belonged to the 101 series. The transition came sometime between 1958-1959, and since we are not experts, we'll leave it at that. We can say that this 1959 model can safely be classified as a 101 car due to its small fixed window on the door, which accompanied the longer wheelbase 101 series. The 1300cc engine is also a 101 series unit, with a block-mounted fuel pump and the enlarged camshaft and crankshaft diameters that would allow for larger displacement engine variants down the road.

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Alfa Romeo, Centro Stile Alfa Romeo, Italdesign

1984 Alfa Romeo GTV-6 3.0L swap

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The North American market never saw a 3.0L V6 version of the Alfa Romeo GTV-6, but across the Atlantic, South African customers were offered the opportunity to purchase one of 212 3.0L GTV-6s which were manufactured in the name of homologation for the racing circuit. That offering was a result of a collaboration between Autodelta and Alfa Romeo South America.

The more common version of the GTV-6 3.0L is made possible by an engine swap from an Alfa Milano Verde, or more commonly, the Alfa 164. In comparison to the South American 3.0L V6, the Verde/164 engine features a slightly longer stroke, coming in at 72.6mm vs. the 72.0mm stroke in the 3.0 SA; cylinder bores are a common 93.0mm. The South African engine made use of 6 single Dell'Orto carburetors, whereas the engine-swapped examples usually feature fuel injection.

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Centro Stile Maserati, Maserati

1985 Maserati Biturbo

The Biturbo should be met with suspicion. After all, it was selected as Time's Worst Car of 1984. Piling on further, we've been advised by those in the Alfa Romeo community to permit the Biturbo ample berth. And yet the temptation remains.

We aren't fans of the shape, though once you get past the awkward, stunted proportions, the design details are handsome. The wheels are a classic design with a nice deep dish to them. The exhaust tips are interesting, and the fonts on the decklid are handsome. We can imagine how the interior, worn out as it is today, would have looked in the original design concept sketches and we see what they were going for. Still, it brings to mind the current Maserati Ghibli - a car that sells in relatively large numbers (for a Maserati) in spite of its odd appearance.

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Fiat, Ghia, Giacosa

1968 Fiat 500 Jolly Replica Service

Fiat 500s aren't so common today, but the original model sold to the tune of nearly 4 million units from introduction to end of production. Of the units produced, about 650 received the Jolly - Joker in Italian - conversion at Ghia. It is said that of those 650 examples, a mere 100 or so survive to this day.

Original units trade for shockingly high sums these days, with 6-figure sales becoming the norm at the auction houses. We understand that these are truly rare and unique vehicles, so as stunning as the price tag may be, it does make sense. Now, were the original units accompanied by years of design and development work, or do they resemble something more along the lines of hasty decapitation? We'd say the truth lies much closer to the later. The service advertised here basically takes a standard 500 and replicates the original Jolly body style. In our eyes, you get 99% of the Jolly experience for a quarter of the price.

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Piaggio, Uncategorized

1990 Piaggio Ape 50

We've seen it before with Trabants and Isettas and it's no different here with the Piaggio Ape: austerity transportation, which is associated with hard times for those for whom it was the only transportation available, is so much more appealing viewed through rose-tinted glasses. Simple, thoughtful designs require only small updates over the years, which is why the 1990 Ape bears a great resemblance to the 1964 original cab-model.

The Ape 50 could take on a ~400lb payload, and to this day can be found moving bread and pizza around narrow European streets. Another common use is in the municipal vehicle setting - transporting garbage, road repair workers, and more. In developing markets, the Ape find even further uses.

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Lancia, Pininfarina

1967 Lancia Flavia 1.8

The Flavia coupe benefits from a healthy does of Pininfarina cross-pollination, especially in the roofline and its kink at the base of the c-pillar. In photographs, the Flavia coupe could easily be mistaken for a much larger touring car, when in reality, it has much more in common with an Alfa Romeo GTV.

The long, tall hood belies the fact that it houses an aluminum boxer 4-cylinder engine and a front wheel drive transmission, both of which barely protrude above the plane of the front bumper. With some rowing of the 4-speed manual gearbox, the 91hp mill should prove to be more than enough to move the 2550lb coupe down the road.

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Bertone, Fiat

1968 Fiat Dino Coupe

The Dino Coupe sits in goldilocks region of the 1960s Italian 2+2 spectrum. Focusing on engine offerings, the spectrum runs from the 4-cylinder Alfas, to the V6 Dino Coupe, to the V8 Maseratis, to the V12 Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The body aspires to a Ferrari shape, missing only with the large greenhouse, and the small-displacement, revvy engine could be described as a scaled-down Ferrari unit.

But these Fiat Dinos stand on their own, Ferrari association or not. The shape is near-perfect, almost like an Italian take on the Mopar fastbacks from the same time period. It concedes some drama to its Fiat Dino Spider sibling, resorting to a more subtle approach to the front-end treatment. The design doesn't make a big splash at first glance, instead making a case for itself with each subsequent examination.

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Centro Stile Alfa Romeo, Italdesign

1985 Lancia Delta S4 Stradale

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Fiat's takeover of Lancia preceded their takeover of Alfa Romeo by around 17 years, and while industrial giant Fiat would seem like a suitable companion to the smaller Italian brands, what resulted in both cases was an unfortunate dilution of each brand's distinctive products. Odd then, that the Fiat-Chrysler merger has been so successful, whereas Lancia has been driven into the ground with Alfa Romeo's demise looking more and more certain.

The Delta came from the second wave of Fiat-spiked Lancia products, and the Delta S4 came from a tube steel factory, seeing as it shared nothing but its silhouette with the Deltas scattered about European roadways. Itself an evolution of the WRC Group B Lancia 037, the Delta S4 was powered by a mid-ship turbocharged, supercharged and intercooled 1.8L 4-cylinder. The combination was good for 5 wins in its 12 race entries, but not good enough for a season victory in its sole years of competition, 1985 and 1986. US rally fans would have been fortunate to witness the Delta S4's 1986 victory in the Olympus Rally in Washington state.

Lancia Delta S4 Stradale steering wheel gauges
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