Junkyard Find: 1979 Fiat 124 Sport Spider
Published: May 28th, 2019
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Back in the early 1980s, when I began my junkyard-crawling career in the East Bay, I would find examples of the Fiat 124 Sport Spider on a depressingly regular basis. I still find them today, in about the same quantities; the only difference is that now they’re 40 years old instead of six years old.Here’s the latest: a black ’79 without a speck of corrosion, spotted in my old East Oakland junkyard stomping grounds (though at a yard that didn’t exist in 1982).
124 Sport Spiders can be purchased for next to nothing in restorable condition, and such has been the case for about a half-century. This means that any broken or registration-challenged example lives perched on the edge of doom, teetering over the abyss with the front wheels pointed straight down at the nearest Ewe Pullet. These cars sit for years or decades in driveways, garages, and yards across the land. A few get fixed and returned to the street. For most, that little shove over the cliff comes… eventually.
These cars were much more fun than the engine specs might suggest. This one came with the 2.0-liter Fiat Twin Cam, rated at 86 horsepower.
I’ve always admired the clever placement of the truck lock on these cars.
My collection of FASTEN SEAT BELT lights, mostly harvested during the 1989-1992 period, includes several dozen of these units.
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From the Fiat 508 Balillo Spider of Benito Mussolini’s Italy to the 124 Sport Spider of the Ayatollah’s gas lines, Fiat had been there for those wanting temperamental sports cars at a reasonable (and rapidly depreciating) price.
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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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basically goes to show how much of a ripoff BHPH places are. there was a lot of room to drop the price before it went to the scrapyard.
The body design of the spider still gets positive reactions. An early assignment for a young Giugiaro.