Name That Car Clock: Veglia 2″ Diameter Analog
I’ve been harvesting car clocks at junkyards for a few years now, stockpiling them for a project that requires at least two dozen functioning timepieces. Here’s one of the prizes of my collection. Believe it or not, this elderly mechanical clock, from a country not known for reliable machinery, still works! So, guess the year/make/model of the car that yielded this fine clock for my collection, then make the jump to see if you were right.
1974 Fiat 124 Sport Spider
It probably wasn’t a very challenging process of elimination to narrow this choice down to something Italian from the 1960s or 1970s, and from there Fiat— being the most common junked Italian car from that era— was the obvious call. Did you get it right?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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My dad had a Fiat when I grew up. The clock looked very similar to this one, but the button was much smaller. That puzzled me, until I read that this one is a mechanical clock. First time I heard about a mechanical clock in a car.
Having a mental disease that caused me to own 23 Fiats over the years, let me clear up a few things about this clock. The black bezel indicates this came from a 1970 or newer model. These were not mechanical in the sense that you wound them; they ran off electricity. That huge abortion of a knob I've only seen once before and I believe it is a "fix" and not original. The factory made these with a small black plastic knob that (surprise) frequently broke off. It's only purpose was to set the hands to the time. 67-69 versions of this clock would have a chrome bezel that is far more attractive. Both the 124 and 850 sports cars shared the gauges, so you could just as easily get one of these from an 850 Spider or 124 Coupe. Most of the instruments in these cars were reliable and failure was rare, but the clocks were a notable exception. Of all the cars I owned I think the clock only worked in one.