I get all warm and fuzzy, thinking Fiat may come back to America. I bought a brand new Fiat Spyder in 1970 for $3,600 and drove it for more than 20 years. It was a great car. Just how great was provided by comparing it to my prior car, a 1967 Chevy Chevelle 396 SuperSport. When I parked the Chevelle at the dealers and drove away in the Fiat, with the top down, I experienced a feeling with which I was not familiar. I could feel the street. When I turned a corner, I felt I could turn it at speeds that would have sent the Chevelle tumbling tires over hardtop into the woods or the fronts of department stores.
Let me tell you a story. There was a time when I smoked and drank. I still drink, but I don't smoke, and I no longer drink behind the wheel. That was not the case one Sunday afternoon when my former wife, the mother of my children, and I went for a spin in the new Fiat around Lake Abilene. I had a Winston in one hand, a scotch in the other. We were going about 50. It was hard to go less than 50 in a 1970 Fiat Spyder. A squirrel darted across the road. I steered left, then right, but coming back right, I oversteered, as encumbered as I was.
The Fiat went into a slide. Not a skid. A slide. The rear end broke free and led us into a circular slide, maybe twice in a circle, and then we stopped, in a cloud of dust and possibly a sprinkle of J&B. I would like to say I didn't spill a drop, but I don't remember. I do know that if I didn't spill any, I would credit the car. It spun flat as a turntable and then stopped and sat as if nothing had happened. It was my first awareness of a car that could forgive a driver.
I loved that car. It was green, tan top, black naugahyde upholstery, bucket seats, wood dash, a tachometer(!!), a five-speed manual transmission, and a four-cylinder engine which was all the power the car needed. The Fiat did more with four cylinders than the Chevelle did with eight, though I have to say that digging the Chevelle away from a stoplight was pretty exciting. But I had had a clue. I proceeded directly from OCS graduation, orders to Europe in my pocket, to the Norman, Okla., dealer where I bought the Chevelle – it was a beautiful metallic blue – and then had it shipped to Germany, where I spent two years swaying out of the way of the Porches and the BMWs on the autobahn. In that company, the beautiful muscle car was a bathtub.
My Fiat was the last of the Spyder boy cars. Its hood was a flat, smooth line. In 1971, the design changed. There were twin humps on the hood, that year and the years thereafter, and they became recognized as the girl Fiats. As we entered the 1990s together, I believed the boy Fiat may have acquired antique value, and I hung onto it longer than I should have. It is commonly known that "FIAT" stands for "Fix It Again Tony." I never had a problem with that, until the car aged. Its pretty wood dash cracked and the door handles snapped, but more fundamentally, the parts to keep the four-cylinder running smoothly began to disappear. It was the last car I actually tuned myself, changing plugs and points and adjusting the timing.
Then the tuneup kits started to disappear, as Fiat's presence diminished in the U.S. Fiat mechanics became as precious as restorers of Renaissance paintings. The last straw was a cracked distributor cap. I managed to find one, but the Spyder was becoming more trouble, and more expense, than it was worth. I sold it in 1993 for $1,600. I still had the last cracked distributor cap until a couple of years ago, when it managed to get thrown away. Today I looked at the Fiat Website for the Spyder, but all the models look like lumps of birthday cake icing. My Fiat was a car for a time and a place. I wonder if it survives.
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