When 86 Horsepower Was More Than Enough For a Sports Car!
OK, we’ll admit that the ’75 Fiat 124 Spider was ridiculously underpowered with just 86 horsepower out of its Twin Cam engine, but compare that to the 62.5 horsepower of the ’75 MGB, a car so miserable that its manufacturer couldn’t afford to round the power figure down a half-horse.
This car scaled in at a lightweight 2,320 pounds, so it wasn’t quite as poky as the power numbers might suggest.
I’ve been seeing junked 124 Spiders quite regularly for decades now; my theory is that every 124 Spider still on the planet is now sitting in a back yard, waiting to be scrapped. You see one on the street every now and then, and some brave souls even race the things.
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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- Golden2husky The biggest hurdle for us would be the lack of a good charging network for road tripping as we are at the point in our lives that we will be traveling quite a bit. I'd rather pay more for longer range so the cheaper models would probably not make the cut. Improve the charging infrastructure and I'm certainly going to give one a try. This is more important that a lowish entry price IMHO.
- Add Lightness I have nothing against paying more to get quality (think Toyota vs Chryco) but hate all the silly, non-mandated 'stuff' that automakers load onto cars based on what non-gearhead focus groups tell them they need to have in a car. I blame focus groups for automatic everything and double drivetrains (AWD) that really never gets used 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time, one goes looking for a place to need it to rationanalize the purchase.
- Ger65691276 I would never buy an electric car never in my lifetime I will gas is my way of going electric is not green email
- GregLocock Not as my primary vehicle no, although like all the rich people who are currently subsidised by poor people, I'd buy one as a runabout for town.
- Jalop1991 is this anything like a cheap high end German car?
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Maybe Dustin Hoffman should have driven THIS in 'The Graduate,' no?
You don't think 62.5 hp is enough? Try having a brake line rupture when driving in traffic.