Junkyard Find: 1980 Fiat 124 Sport Spider
Will the steady procession of Fiat 124 Spiders into America’s self-service wrecking yards never cease? So far in this series, we’ve seen this ’71, this ’73, this ’75, this ’76, this ’78, this ’80, this ’80, and now yet another sporty little Fiat from the Malaisiest year of them all. Here’s a beat-up but not hopeless example I spotted in Northern California.
Unlike its MGB competitor (then on its last year of production), you could get the 1980 124 Sport Spider with factory fuel injection. 80 horsepower, which today’s American car buyers would consider unacceptable in a lawn tractor.
The interior yielded some good stuff to a lucky Fiat owner, looks like.
These cars rusted even in California, but this one looks solid.
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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These are great cars if you can find one without rust. Upgrade to electronic ignition on the older models, add a header and a Weber carb, and the car is a blast to drive. You have a little bit of a back seat, a very user-friendly top mechanism (literally takes a few seconds to put it up or down), coil springs and discs all the way around, and a 5 speed transmission versus the 4 speeds of the competitors of the day. If you're mechanical at all, then the car is very easy to maintain. Great cars, but beware of the rust!
The post 1980 models seemed to be of better quality and more reliable with fuel injection. After Fiat ditched the U.S market in 1982 Malcolm Bricklin sold these as the Pinafarina until around 1985. Those cars seemed to be better made, I doubt many around are rusty and had a more modern dashboard.