The Fiat 500X counts as a crossover, somehow. Yes, it shares a platform with the Jeep Renegade, but then again, it also shares that platform with the Fiat 500L.
At least it looks better than that rolling blob of anonymity.
New for 2020 is a Sport model, although how much sport is gained is debatable.
The junkyard tells me that the Fiat 500 depreciates nearly as quickly as the New Mini and Mitsubishi Mirage, though the current generation of 500 remains sufficiently recent that most examples I see are crash victims.
This car, though crashed, is still special: a genuine, numbers-matching Gucci Edition Fiat 500, found in a Denver car graveyard. (Read More…)
Rare Rides occasionally features vehicles that have somehow slipped through the 25-year importation net and exist in this country as illegal immigrants. First up was a little Citroën Picasso hatchback from Arizona, and more recently we featured a bright orange Fiat Barchetta from Florida.
Today we venture into illegality once more, with the luxurious and beautiful Lancia Thesis from 2003.
Fiat Chrysler’s Serbian assembly plant was the first European auto factory to shut down as a result of the growing coronavirus pandemic — a grim harbinger of things to come, and not just for Europe.
That temporary February shutdown stemmed from a parts shortage arising from the hard-hit Chinese manufacturing sector. A far more prolonged shutdown came in mid-March, for obvious reasons. Well, that’s all over, as a crucially important product is now back in production, ready to satiate the hunger of the American buying public. (Read More…)
There was one prior case where a too hot to title European car appeared on these pages, and it was a boring Citroën hatchback. Today’s forbidden, ahem, “legal” fruit is a bit more zesty. Presenting an underage Fiat Barchetta from 1997.
If the Allemano name sounds familiar, it might be because we featured one of the coachbuilder’s two-door creations previously: a 1959 Abarth 2200. While that Rare Ride was a sporty and luxurious touring coupe, today’s Allemano is for a much more relaxed customer.
Presenting the 1100 Allemano cabriolet.
Of all the production upsets born of coronavirus-caused supply chain disruptions, the idling of Fiat Chrysler’s Kragujevac, Serbia assembly plant is certainly not near the top. Not for American consumers, anyway.
The automaker announced Friday that the plant, home to the unloved Fiat 500L, will be offline until sometime late in the month. If U.S. inventory suffered, would anyone notice? (Read More…)
Today’s Rare Ride hails from a brand which ceased its operations decades ago. At its peak, it never produced more than a couple thousand cars a year. Said vehicles were largely confined to sales in Europe, and specifically within Italy.
Let’s learn about the brand behind this little red Moretti 750.
Not long ago, Rare Rides featured a top-line Fiat 2100 sedan that was rebodied at the order of Abarth into the luxury 2200 Coupe Allemano. Today we have a look at a subcompact Fiat that received a similar treatment. It’s an 850 Special, Vignale-style.
An article posted yesterday on these renowned pages really got me thinking about how certain brands seem to not have much of a future in the automotive landscape of 2020 — and beyond. If you didn’t click the link there, you may be wondering which brand I’m presently speaking of. It is of course Alfa Romeo.
Let’s do some Italian-style pondering.
Fiat’s tuning company Abarth has appeared on Rare Rides once before, when we featured the very boxy Ritmo from 1987. Today’s Abarth is from a time when the company was independent of Fiat, and it happens to be the opposite of an Eighties econobox.
Presenting an Abarth 2200 Coupe Allemano from 1959. (Read More…)
The jury’s out on how long we can expect the Fiat brand to linger — on life support — in the North American market, but the coming model year will see an improvement to one Fiat model. A model that hasn’t performed nearly as well as many would have thought.
For 2020, a crossover sharing its underpinnings and drivetrain with the far more popular Jeep Renegade amps up its looks in a bid to get noticed. (Read More…)
Imagine you desire the sporting characteristics of a coupe, with the practicality of something larger like a sedan. Now imagine you opted for neither of those things, and instead bought an eccentric shooting brake. A fevered dream of polyester malaise and Italian electrics await; it’s the 1977 Lancia Beta HPE.
We began our story of the Lancia Delta with its conception and birth. Taking its place as the small family hatchback in Lancia’s lineup, it was quickly worked into something much faster and more aggressive. Let’s find out just how far Lancia went with its creative editing.
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