Fiat & Abarth 124 Spider & Coupé: Revised Paperback Edition

INTRODUCTION

Let me take you back to 1969 for a moment. There was a chap who used to park his Fiat 124 Coupé in the same pub car park as me and, like regular Essex men, we used to commute up to London. My transport at the time was an MGC GT; grand tourers both, I thought, and we compared notes on performance and so on, as enthusiasts do. We never put our claims to the test, but he was convinced his Fiat (a BC) would not only stay with the 3-litre MG, but would out-handle it cross country. We ought to have put it to the test because, although at the time I felt there would be little point with the C’s superior long-haul power trouncing the Fiat, having researched this book it would appear he was almost certainly right and I, along with my understeering brute, would have been humbled ...

My feeling then, as now, was that the Fiat Coupé never really looked as if it could ‘do the business’: a neat bit of styling, yes, tidy and somehow grown-up, compared with the slightly older but nevertheless raffish hatchback MGC GT design. And that was how the 124 Coupé was for me, in all its three guises. Really a little too staid in appearance, belying what potential rested in the chassis. Coupé fans might argue that the MGB or C GT design was old fashioned by the mid to late ’60s standards of the 124 Coupé, but there were only a couple of years between the launch of both models, MG and Fiat. Not that it has too much relevance in terms of an analysis of market preference; the MG design lasted from 1965 to 1980 whilst the Fiat 124 Coupé was in production from 1967 to 1975. When you get to the chapter on the Coupé history I make the case that one is a grand tourer whilst the other is a coupé, which just about sums up this little diversion.

The Spider was a different matter, but since it was hardly ever seen in the UK, it never appeared on my shopping list. Instead I went for a home-grown Elan S4SE in which to enjoy the heady delights of rag-roof motoring in the early ’70s, plus the troubles that Lotus ownership encompassed in those days.

The point of this preamble is that, for me, this book is very much a reappraisal of the Coupé and a discovery - almost - of the assets of the Spider. Their Italian siblings from Alfa Romeo were always more prominent in the popular imagination, with competition successes for the Giulia GTA which you could actually catch racing in the annual 500kms European Touring Cars thrash at Snetterton on Good Fridays in the late ’60s , and the Duetto spider winning public recognition as Dustin Hoffmann’s sidekick in the movie The Graduate.

Fiat’s 124 Sport Spider was always a rarity in the UK because it was never seriously imported by Fiat UK and only a handful of cars were ever produced in right-hand-drive form. Most of the 124s exported from Italy seem to have gone to the States, and any left over to Germany. I first saw one in the early ’70s when I was gallivanting around the race tracks of Europe as press officer for John Player Team Lotus. This ‘circus’ was very different from the rallying one in which the Abarth-tuned cars made their mark between ’72 and ’75, but one always had a keen eye for interesting machinery which turned up in the paddock car park. I remember thinking how graceful, classy yet purposeful the car looked, promising myself a drive sometime. I had to wait almost 15 years for that experience!

When is a Coupé a GT car? Not when it’s a 124 Coupé, as it lacks ‘fastback’ styling; but it has better claims on the grand tourer label than many mundane family hacks badged as GTs.

Both Alfa and Fiat Spider bodyshells were built alongside one another on the Pininfarina lines before being transferred to their respective maternal homes at Arese and Turin. Whilst its aesthetic qualities are in no doubt, the 124 Spider’s styling is perhaps less exuberant than the Alfa Spider’s. The Fiat has a more upright stance, a bit like a rakish MGB, and at rest both Spiders sit with their tails slightly up in the air. But as you work your way around the Fiat there are some very nice touches which make it special. Like the way the tail slopes away and the back panel tucks back in on itself; the headlight nacelles provide the same sunken-eyed look which works well on the MGB/C and sundry other cars like the Datsun 240Z; the fanciful twin-cam bulges on the bonnet of post ’70 models, the slight flares to the wheelarches, all conspire to make it a very well proportioned car. There were even a couple of Pininfarina-designed Ferraris which looked much like the Fiat, only slightly larger: the 275 GTS launched at the 1964 Paris Salon demonstrated exactly what Pininfarina had in mind for the Fiat Spider, and the more opulent 365 California, shown at Geneva in 1966, also displayed several Spider-esque characteristics, especially in the rear-end treatment. The likeness of the 275 GTS in proportion and detail is unmistakable, and one might be tempted to recommend any impecunious Ferrari aspirant to look no further than the Fiat Spider to satisfy his or her dreams; the only things lacking would be the Borrani wheels and the fabulous scream of the 3.3-litre V12 engine and its 145mph top speed. And besides, there’s more chance of owning a Fiat Spider, since only 200 Ferrari 275 GTS were built. Lower your 124 a bit, fit early European spec bumpers and you’re there!

So, having established a stylistic link with something on a more exalted plane, what of the sorority between 124 Spider and Coupé? The 124 Spider shared the same mechanicals as the 124 Sport Coupé, and it was the first car to accommodate the new Aurelio Lampredi-designed Fiat belt-drive twin-cam. In a similar way to the Alfa power plant, in which the cams were driven by an enclosed chain, the Fiat engine increased in size from 1438cc to 1608cc, and the 132 Saloon-derived engine went from 1592cc to 1756cc and finally to 1995cc. In its original form, the 1438cc unit produced 86bhp at 5100rpm and 110lb/ft torque at 3000rpm, enough to give a maximum speed of 110mph and a 0-60 time of 10.6 seconds. The 124’s is a tale of unexploited performance potential, for the twin-cam in its 1600 guise is generally reckoned to be the best; all versions were strangled in the US by federal emissions control regulations, and only the supercharged Spidereuropa Volumex of 1983-5 produced after production was given over entirely to Pininfarina, gave the Spider model the sort of performance it deserved.

The Aurelio Lampredi-designed iron-block 1438cc twin-cam engine coupled to an excellent gearbox, evolved from 1966 to 1993, when it was still powering high performance models like the Lancia Delta Integrale and Alfa Romeo 155 GTA. The cooling fan was subsequently moved to a mounting on the radiator.

Both Spider and Coupé were based on the floorpan of the 124 saloon but, whereas the Coupé shared the same dimensions and suspension layout of the saloon, the Spider’s platform was shortened by 5.5 inches (140mm). There were certain modifications to the floorpan to strengthen it, and the Pininfarina factory produced trimmed and painted shells to be completed back at the Lingotto factory. The Spider was always supported by Fiat’s bread and butter models, as is often the case with a specialised car, but when sales had dwindled to an uneconomical level the Spider was hived off to Pininfarina to make what they could of it. Then when a lucrative Cadillac contract loomed and the impending cessation of 132-type gearboxes threatened, the Spider got the chop altogether, which was a shame when the Alfa shells rolled on next door, as it were.

The 124 Spider briefly came into its own as a competition car in 1969 when Fiat surreptitiously entered a works team in World Championship rallies. They were fourth in the 1971 Acropolis Rally, and 7th in the Monte Carlo, winning the Acropolis and Austrian Alpine events in 1972. By this time, the cars were entered as Fiat-Abarth Sport Spiders, their 1756cc engines producing some 165bhp with the Fiat’s sturdiness making up for what it lost in power-to-weight against the nimble but fragile Renault-Alpine A110s.

There’s no question that the Fiat Spider looked its most aggressive and purposeful in its rallying guise, sporting spats, wide wheels and compact hard top. Big name drivers hired by Fiat between 1972 and ’76 included Scandinavian aces Bjorn Waldegaard, Rauno Aaltonen, Marku Alen and German Achim Warmbold, although the most consistently successful driver amongst a myriad of Italians, of whom Verini and Pinto were prominent, was Hakan Lindberg. Thereafter, Fiat’s rallying effort went over to the 131 Abarth saloons, which won the Championship in 1977, ’78, and ’80.

Nowadays, the Spider and Coupé are well supported by clubs in Europe and the USA, details of which appear in the appendices. Anyone interested in the cars can expect to be welcomed with open arms by these clubs, and there is much advice available for buying, maintaining, sourcing spares, and restoring. I retain some of my original reservations about the Coupé, simply because the styling never hit the spot, but I’d go for a 124 Spider if circumstances allowed roadster motoring. But which generation? The early looks, combined with latter-day performance; how to obtain that? Read the chapter on the specialists ...

John Tipler

Norwich, England

Abarth Stradale presents aggressive stance, and equals any other sports car in the macho stakes.

Second-series Spider, the BS: the closest many will get to ownership of a Ferrari roadster.

1

HISTORY OF FIAT CARS

To set the 124s in context, here is a brief history of their ancestry. Fiat came in on the ground floor of the motor industry; founded in 1899 as Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, or F.I.A.T., the consortium included a cross-section of Torinese upper class and artisans. The starting point was the noted Turin School of Engineering, at the turn of the century a hotbed of innovations and techniques. A city on the up and up, Turin was burgeoning with fresh talent and traditional skills.

One of the original directors of FIAT was a wealthy former cavalry officer called Giovanni Agnelli, and his colleagues were Emanuele di Bricherasio and Count Roberto Biscaretti di Ruffia (founder of the Turin Motor Museum). It was Agnelli who steered the socialist course which led to Fiat being the major player on the Italian and, indeed, world automobile industry stage. In the formative years of the motor industry only the wealthy could afford to buy and run cars; Agnelli visualised that the motor car would not only liberate the Italian populace, but a healthy business could be run by supplying it. The Futurist art movement, inspired by Marinetti’s manifestos, took off in 1909 and caught the wave of industrial expansion in northern Italy, romanticising the car and debunking the old culture. Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Cyclist exemplifies the then prevalent enthusiasm for speed and the new age transport; from 1909 to 1912, Fiat also manufactured bicycles.

By being successful at producing motor cars, Fiat was subsequently able to diversify into other areas, embracing aircraft, diesel electric railway rolling stock, ships and marine diesel engines: Fiat was into ship building in Genoa as early as 1906. But the car company never lost sight of the fundamental principal of always catering for the mass market. Agnelli saw the future a little more clearly when he visited the Ford Model T plant in 1912. In 1914, Fiat ranked among the top five European producers with 4644 units; Ford’s tally the same year was 308,162.

Agnelli and his colleagues also espoused paternalistic and nationalistic principals, supporting the fragile Italian economy by acquiring companies which showed promise but needed support. Over the years, the list included Ansaldo aircraft, Autobianchi, Ferrari, Abarth, Lancia and Alfa Romeo, as well as SPA and OM trucks. Independent Fiat car plant subsidiaries were set up in Vienna and Poughkeepsie, New York, and Napiers were made under licence from 1906 to 1909. What was to become the SEAT company started as a Fiat plant at Barcelona in 1931. Later diversification into such areas as Olivetti typewriters and the La Stampa newspaper has turned Fiat into a vast conglomerate without which the Italian economy, and its way of life, would be in serious trouble.

Fiat has always manufactured mainstream family and mini-cars and small runs of exotics: we have some rather interesting specialist machines like the elegant 1100S Coupé of 1947, the 1100 Spider of 1953 and, of course, the 124 Spider and Coupé, production of which was supported by the mass market vehicles.

Felice Nazzaro with the formidable 16-litre 130hp Fiat winning the French Grand Prix at Dieppe in 1907. He completed ten laps of the 47-mile circuit at an average speed of 70.5mph.

A contemporary writer, Gerald Rose, commented that the Fiats with their great high bonnets and rattling chains seemed to tear through the air with a painful effort as if fighting against a great resistance. The S76 of 1911 bore the beginnings of a streamlined radiator, however, and Fiats had the measure of rival Peugeots, Lorraines and Rolland-Pillains.

The First FIAT

The very first FIAT was the Tipo A, powered by a 697cc flat twin, of which eight were built between 1899 and 1900. To get itself off the ground, the Fiat consortium had bought up Giovanni-Battista Ceirano’s little factory and hired his designer, Aristide Faccioli (who was quickly replaced by Giovanni Enrico), and the 50-strong workforce. This included such talented individuals as Vincenzo Lancia and Felice Nazzaro who, with Cagno and Wagner, made names for themselves driving Fiat’s racing cars in events like the Coppa Florio, Targa Florio, Kaiserpreis, French and American Grands Prix. In 1907 Fiat won in France, Sicily and Germany, despite variances of formulae.

In 1906 the FIAT capital initials gave way to the acronym Fiat, the company prospered during the first decade of the 20th century and was three times wealthier than Isotta Fraschini, its closest Italian competitor. Production reached 1698 units in 1910, when the workforce numbered 3500, and centred on the Tipo 4, powered by a 5.7-litre engine with 4-speed gearbox. This was followed by the Tipo Zero of 1913, and the 2B, which prefaced the first mass produced Fiat, the 1.5-litre 501 of 1919.The 501, with its distinctive pear-shaped radiator, ran with a 1.5-litre, four-cylinder engine, developing 23 horsepower, and in seven years over 80,000 units were produced. A number were used as taxis in London. During the First World War Fiat production encompassed Tipo 2 staff cars, prototype tanks, 1336 aircraft and