Geee you folks have been busy.
For Papa Tony
Executive summary:
The Emperor Fiat went to the best tailor in the land to get himself some new clothes and a barber attended the shop to give the Emperor a haircut. The tailor did such a wondrous job that no one recognized him in his new garments and called him an imposter and the guards were called and he was arrested. He pleaded and pleaded and pleaded that he was indeed the sole living son of Fiat Agneli, heir to the kingdom. The knights, wizards and learnerd scholars of the kingdom all gathered around a big round table and discussed into the long hours of the night until they asked for the imposter to be brought before then from the dungeon, to be judged by the court. A learnerd scholar asked the imposter to strip naked before them so the physician could examine him. Once they got an awful eyefull they all agreed that the 'Emperor had no clothes' and it was indeed Emperor Fiat. The naysayers and the accusers were sent to the cultural re-education centre in a far away land.
Everyone lived happily ever after.
The end.
Bernice
You have me at a disadvantage as the VolvoPenta below is probably the only 4 stroke in a thousand miles and I havent access to my library. I do have that list and it doesn't show that the US was the centre of the earth for Fiat. The would of course would have rocks in their head if they didn't factor the stupid hurdles the US put in the way for the successor to the 850 that was already a part of that cars market. Not an insignificant market and to exclude that share of the global market, wouldn't have been smart. The much later Barchetta was only left hand drive and excluded the RH market, they weren't chasing the American market by making it LH only. Me thinks you read too much into it from your side of the mirror. Perhaps the post 82 Bertone marketing has made a lasting impact.
Bernice please answer my one question before you expect I answer all of yours, its really this simple.
Please expand on why we think that the Fiat 850 spider is a Fiat but the X1/9 is a Bertone.
I offered you factual reasons why the lines at Bertone's facility were given the role when the Lingotto renovations began. That one act does not make the car a Bertone, that Nuccio's marketing is available post Lingotto and rebadging of a Fiat is not 'evidence' that it was a Bertone. He was just the tailor, that Fiat boasted that they were 'dressed by Bertone' is as vacuous as red carpet Hollywood events where poor excuses for journalists ask 'who are you wearing' to pander to gossip rags where there are far more intelligent questions that need answering. I really want to be that friend that lets you believe you are right, there is no point to countering some of your points, the whole world is not enamored with what North America has to offer.
The X1/9 was originally designed for the US market. This is why this chassis was designed and constructed in the way it was. Agree?
Nope! Not entirely
Fiat did not take the US car market very seriously.
Nope! It's a lot more convoluted than that.
So if I don't agree is it no longer one of your
facts?
Talking of industrial shenanigans, loaned a good book before I got stuck here,
'Stealing Speeed' Mat Oakley ISBN: 978 1 84425 689 1
great read about industrial espionage and the Degner/Kaaden scandal. Highly recomended if you are interested in post WW2 industry and into two wheels that aren't 'hogs'. American industries are not alone when it comes to what we Downunder call 'Sledging' nor unfair advantage. It's 'just business'. Deploy a bit of empathy and look from outside in. 'Detroit' was VERY worried about European and Japanese Auto manufacturers, the tarrif-design barriers and defamation campaigns against not just Fiat are not Fiats fault but a domestic cultural one and I don't want to go down this road. Chrysler itself was having great pains in Europe and Peugeot eat them up. The word cheat is one used I should leave it at, but there it is. You can't blame Audi for the scandelous yellow journalists, seeking the sensational, not the truth at 60 Minutes.
The slander of the Audi 5000 should have bankrupted CBS, but natural justice often has its own way of permeating the sludge. In 1989, after taking three whole years dragging its heals studying the blatantly obvious, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued the report on Audi’s “sudden unintended acceleration problem.” NHTA’s findings fully exonerated Audi and some other implicated foreign makes. As your Homer Simpson is noted as saying - Doh! 60 minutes did not retract their piece, they called the NHTSA report “an opinion.” 60 Minutes pretty much ruined Audi sales in the US for several years.
Anyone with half a brain would understand the lesson in basic automobile physics: brakes are always more powerful than engines, unless you have a low range 4X4. Audi’s unhappy owners saw the greedy opportunity to 'sue ehm $$$" launched a class action suit charging lost resale value. Audi almost abandoned the US in 1993. When they returned en masse, they re-positioned themselves as a luxury brand against the one who filled the void they had left - Lexus (its just a Toyota folks). Instead of pure model designations (80, 90, 100, 200, 4000, 5000), they moved to the letter/number combination (A4, A6, A8, etc) we know today. Far from the desired objective of some the result was a more profitable and exclusive brand, they are admired perhaps because of their Teutonic character and that they took in on the chin. Maybe they were reading Dale Carnegie, " The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it"
I have never watched an episode of that program since the 80's, thanks to their stop watch device intro I have plenty of warning to change the channel.
In the end it's cultural, with the 5000's pedals being too close together so twits that wear stiletos taking their kids to school don't drive into their garage doors. The irony in both LBJ's Chicken Tax and the Audi example is it ended up up having the opposite effect. Audi went 'upmarket' and now it cost Americans more to buy a Ford Connect just like the (Fiat Doblo) The Ram ProMaster City from Turkey. What an own goal! I don't know if it now is in your domestic market but the 'new VW Caddy' is a superior vehicle with Audi's DSG and a 2 Ltr Turbo Diesel that runs rings around it, but you will probably never
see them and that's a shame, but who is to blame?
Fiat did not do this to the degree many of the Japan manufactures did.
That one sentance alone should point you to reasons as to why, Fiat had the whole of Europe in a market it was a natural fit for, Japan had what? Are you perhaps upset that Fiat did not come and kneel at the alter of American auto makers, they were not welcome in a hostile market. You can make the case that LBJ colluded with Walter Reuther to keep Europeans out to protect UAW jobs, VW Kombi owners will have a very firm opinion about it. I'd rather not discuss politics without
1. A good steak dinner and a few great bottles of Connawarra Red
2. Knowing you personally for a long time.
It goes against my better judgement but you need to understand how Italians or Europeans view North Americans. That folks on this board in the 80's knew what Europe had to offer was different to what they had domestically is because its a different market. Long before Sir Tim Berners-Lee set the foundations for the World Wide Web at CERN on a NeXT computer, the 'Mad Men' of advertising and media could spin whatever they wanted in the 60's, 70's and 80's and most of the flock would just follow, the insular perspective by broader culture is just a function of societies not exposed to external influence. TimBL allowed anyone with a connection to see past their physical and social borders and open their eyes, but they have to have to want to. We are all flawed because, . . . we are only human, some of us just 'get out and about' more.
Fiat exports
Your really going to have to take a look and put the X1/9 into global perspective. This image has been going around the Web for a long time, I have a better one but take a look at the dockside apron in Genoa. The little line of cars between the yellow lines are X1/9's for export. The rest are not, you may be at pains to accept, but Australians have no issue with understanding that we are a small market and Europeans are not going to bend over backwards for us. See where I am going with this, many hurdles put up by the US is something that is just a reality. I guess Fiat found it wasn't worth its effort to bang its head against the wall, Peugeot did the same a decade later. The UAW were not going to be tolerated in the FCA deal and they have no one but themselves to thank. Govt protectionism only lasts so long, the up-link was busy before I sent this as the Yuan is tanking because of the very same thing, Aussie mining stocks are vulnerable and some of us issued orders to act to limit exposure to that this morning, it's just business.
If you go to Torino get down to Genoa and look for a authentic 'Pasta alla Genovese', you haven't eaten great Pesto until you have eaten trofie smothered in fresh basil and pine nuts, ask them to leave the pecorino cheese and the grater along with the vino. Yummy nom nom nom nom nom!
The US safety regulation
That the short lived crash test that ONLY two European manufacturers could meet is not the only reason it became a Targa. This was a something that automotive engineers at the time thought was going to be the way ahead, not just in the US. I gave you a link were the Fiat engineer protested the regs and warned that super mini's were in danger of being outlawed by overzealous regulators. That the 240 Volvo is built like a Panzer tank is a reflection that their global market strategy included the US. They cleverly turned the over engineering into a brand that was all about being the safest car you could buy. Car design isn't about the lowest common denominator but the highest hurdle manageable whilst being profitable. Not gaining compliance in a market is a factor in how the numbers stack up if a proposal is allowed the green light. It probably suited Nuccio well as it added weight to his 'mini Miura' proposal being on the money. Both the US and Europe do it all the time, Ralf Nader and the scare tactics used litter the engineering world with un-needed levels of specification. Just as some of Europe turned its back on the US 'protectionism' of the 70's to save its auto industries so do Europeans. The levels of sophistication needed in the 80's /90's and now the crippling emission standards in Europe are impediments to cars from the US having chances of success there. The very reason the Lampredi SOHC exists is because of the financial advantages of small capacity engine in markets it was sold into. The Ferrari 208 GT4, being their smallest production V8, is just another quirk of that.
Whilst some would wish the X 1/9 has the cultural cult status of the Nissan S30 (240 Z) the X1/9 was too small a car to appeal to that people who bought the Z. I can attest that what SteveC says is correct. A close very friend is an engineer working for a medical device conglomerate who has been restoring a 240Z in his spare time for over 5 years now, the costs are horrendous despite (because?) having aftermarket vendors supplying components. The 'premium' that engine builders think they can get away with because of what it is makes me annoyed. Valve dynamics and flow porting inlet/heads are no different a science because it came from Japan, or Italy where they regularly copied from. But the great unwashed just cop it and think its fair - nope. Whilst he has uprated the old original 150 BHP engine my Turbo X would eat it for breakfast on the short course, admittedly neither are race prepared track cars.
I was into Fiats before I could legally drive, the X1/9 Papa had was why I had to get my hands on one. Whilst some of us can grab one * <$500 their scarcity is now moving even poor examples in the opposite direction. The X1/9 will always be the 'little runt' of the litter that is uncanny and successful beyond its stature. Describes the Aussie character too, we are often noted for punching above our weight down here.
. . . . . . . except the market demands and expectations of what this two seater needed to be had changed.
Wooooha steady on. In one sentence you point to the MG TF and roadsters that were a revaluation to American servicemen used to large lums of iron and in the next you say they should have stuck them on the photocopier and you elude to enlarging them by some % to suit the American market. SteveC's example of what happened to the Nissan Z with revisions through the billowing layers of bloat (260, 280 etc) is what is wrong with that POV, no no no. Fiat gave you the Scorpion, the oil scare and the engine size tax in some of Fiats markets factored into why the V6 was never built. There were many revisions of the original X1/9 sketches and none of them 'worked'. Car styling is just weird like that, what looks good on paper ( or even today on a Workstation 3D image ) often doesn't relate to an appealing solid object. That's why clay is still used today, often subtle changes in contours make all the difference in the final mockup. They are extremely rare but if you have seen and touched a Bertone styled Lamborghini Silhouette you will understand that the X1/9 is pretty where Lamborghini's targa Silhouette is a little odd. Some things just don't upscale well.
The MR2 and the Miata were not massive in proportions the car that you seem to be describing is the TR7 = failure. I scratched around the development phase of that over 30 years ago and my recollection is the Brits failed. The MGF got there 30+ years late and for many reasons fell flat. I'm not clear on what it is you wanted Fiat to do, the only thing that Europe makes that is bigger in the inside than it is on the outside is a fictional blue English Police box. If what you are describing is another car styled by Bertone the Silhouette's younger brother the Japla , a true baby Lambo, it was not a automotive success story. Your countrymen, Chrysler owned and terminated the Japla, despite that it was Lambo's most successful V8 car at that time.
This is going to sound like automotive archaeology lesson, its not, but I really think we need to understand the significance of a Carrozzeria in so far as just the Italian ones this is what I remember
Bertone
Ghia
Zagato
Touring
Vignale
Pininfarina
Giugiaro
Scaglietti
Vignale
Castagna Milano
Faralli & Mazzanti
Allemano
Fissore
Marazzi
Boneschi
Castagna
I know I have missed some (one intentionally) but they are just most of the Italian ones I know of, the French had many many many more due to the evolution of the self propeld carriage, Chapron is one a Citroen owner might know of. The Germans had about 1/2 a dozen but everyone knows Karmann. The English well I could never list the vast numbers they had, lots were not successful but they dwarfed other nations when it comes to coach builders. Your folks had probably as many as the Italians but the only ones I can remember were Fisher, Fleetwood and LeBaron. None were as memorable as the Italians.
The Italian that everyone forgets and I omitted previously was from Torino (Turin), Alessio. It was he who was the Carrozzeria that created the first eight cars FIAT built.
The cars are not called Alessio's but Fiats. I have concluded the issue is in the words "designed by Bertone" , the guy didn't do it on his own - he could never have done the X1/9 without Fiats expertise.
Bertone! anyone who thinks otherwise ( I'll be a bit gentler that SteveC )
'The Castle'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2DH-nKBeA
A great Aussie 'Flick' if you want to understand 'Bogan' sub culture Downunder this is a classic 'home grown' Aussie film done with good humor. Relatives back home never get it on the first screening. Every time they watch it again they see more and more of why we are so different. We're a weird mob Downunder, I put it down to the brilliant diamond blue skys and endless beaches and wonderful sunshine. Cook anyone's grey matter.
We are just going around in circles now so I accede to your supposition my friend. Or you can agree to disagree.
Not long now and then I'm going to dig out that photo of the little Uno Turbo on the track kicking Holden's butt.
Classic underdog.:clap:
Finn
