I always wanted to have a car that was a little special. A hot rod or a sports car or something just a little out of the ordinary. Because I worked in a factory it didn’t make much sense to buy something really expensive so after my management career was pretty well set I started looking around at the possibilities. I dismissed all the British MG’s, Triumphs, and Austin Healy’s. A Jaguar was totally out of the question and I wouldn’t have driven one into the factory anyhow. My Dad had an MG and a Lancia Appia Zagato. The MG was a little pedestrian and broke down a lot. The Lancia was way cool but had something like 63 HP. FIAT’s were still around, by 1986 they had quit selling new ones but I started watching the newspaper and after driving some 1600 and 1800 Spyders I found a 1979 2000cc FIAT Spyder. It was metallic blue with a tan interion, 48,000 original miles from the first owner. She bought it right out of College, drove it for 6 years, got married, got pregnant and had to sell it. I drove it, we made an offer and got a cashiers check from the bank. I think the girls name was Susan, when I handed her the check and started the engine she buried her head in her husbands chest and cried. The car was almost perfect, it had a scratch on the right side door made by the original owners Golden Retriever. Couldn’t wait to get in the car one night. And there were a couple of stone chips on the nose. When I found that the standard fuel pump had been replaced with a Bendix electric I went to the dealer and got an original. I had the timing belt replaced and after a few thousand miles the water pump got noisy. That was it, the car ran like a top until it had 105,600 miles. The engine was designed by Vittorio Jano. He was one of those brilliant Italian engineers who designed everything from the Alfa Romeo 8 cylinder Grand Prix engine for the 158-159 series to a slew of standard production engines. He gave the 2000 a soul. When you shifted from 3rd to 4th his engine gave a little bark and really started to pull. The gear ratios were perfectly chosen, you could drive all over town in 2nd and 4th but when you hit the road 3000 rpm in 5th was 70 mph and it would cruise there all day. 30 more hp would have been nice but the engine would pull your head off without getting all stressed. We took it everywhere, it put a smile on the face of everybody who saw it. Pininfarina built the body in their factory and if they hadn’t made the deal to build the ill-fated Atlante for GM they might still be building them. It was classically Italian, it sang when you drove it. The hum from the tires, Pirellis natch, the bark of the 4 cyl engine and the whine from the gearbox in the lower gears. I’ve had some nice cars since the FIAT, the only one that came close to getting me emotionally involved was a Mitsubishi 3000GT but it was a sexy appliance. The FIAT was a car. People designed it, People made it. It had soul and a heart. One of these days I’ll dig out the pictures and scan them so you can see it.
