Chris,
My Fiat was came out the same year as your Bugeye and was a price
competitive model in most markets at the time. Now here are the
differences. The Fiat has a, set it once and forget it Weber carb, no
Lucas electric's problems, front & rear sway bars, Alfin brakes, roll up
windows, 2 speed wipers + washers, 2 speed heater fan, all the heater
controls in dash, courtesy lights on the doors the trunk and under the
hood, and the crowning feature of a Fiat is a top that you can raise or
lower from the drivers seat with one hand without unbuckling the factory
seat belts. But the most important difference is that at 6'2" and 220lbs
I fit in the Fiat with the top up something I can't do with a Bugeye or
I would love to have one of them in my collection. If Fiat would have
marketed these cars better they would have sold a lot more than the
12000 between 1959-63 of which only 2500 came to North America. The myth
of Fiats being unreliable was more from the very poorly translated shop
and parts manuals than anything being poor quality about the cars. If
you can't make sense of the manuals it hard to service the cars properly
my TR3 manuals are 1000 times more useful than the Fiat factory manuals
are.
Keep an open mind every car manufacturer has made junk and most have
made the odd jewel worth cherishing and preserving.
More than one closed minded kid when I was in high school burst into
tears while handing me their pink slip after telling me my American
Motors AMX couldn't be fast, 455 hp on a chassis dyno and 2800lbs with
me in the car makes for a very fast car.
I think in my life time the most unreliable vehicle I have seen was my
dad's 72 Austin Marina it was in the shop at least once a month for the
year he kept it, and yet the 69 Austin America it had replaced had been
a tower of reliability and fun to boot.
Doug Hamilton
1960 TR3A
1963 Fiat Cabriolet
>"Totally reliable" and "Fiat" in the same e-mail?!?! Yikes!
>
>Chris Eck
>59 Bugeye
>59 TR3A
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