Our Visual Sunday photo a couple of weeks back showed a very chic woman posing next to a FIAT 1500 Berlina, a car I don’t think I’ve seen for many years. I do however recall seeing them frequently back in the day, that day being the mid-1960’s – especially on family trips to Germany, where FIAT’s were generally more common than in the UK at the time. The fact that I don’t have a single photograph of one among the thousands I’ve taken at shows and events in recent years is indicative of their scarcity here. I didn’t even see one at the last two Auto Italia days at Brooklands – 1500 Italian cars each time and not one FIAT 1300/1500, although there are supposed to be about 20 knocking around on UK roads, according to howmanyleft.com.
Anyway, it inspired me to see if I could find one for our Prime Find feature, and thanks to the wonders of the interweb, I managed to find a handful, though none were for sale in the UK, and with one exception, they were in need of more than just a little TLC. However, I did find not one but two very nice examples of a version of the 1500 that I don’t recall seeing anywhere, ever, but first, a little background to the FIAT 1300/1500 itself.
Strictly speaking, the 1500 Berlina was the same car as the 1300, just with a bigger engine – in fact it’s not possible to tell whether our Visual Sunday photo was of a 1300 or 1500, as the only difference would have been the number on the back.
I think FIAT were trying to say something here…
FIAT launched the range in 1961, replacing the previous 1200 and 1400 models. In both cases, the company offered saloon, estate, convertible and coupé versions, with the latter two variants now quite sought after and a more common sight than their more “regular” siblings. This might well be because of their exceptionally pretty styling by Pininfarina, and indeed while I’ve not seen a Berlina for ages, I have seen a number of the coupés and convertibles, which based on a focus group of one would indicate the two-seater variants are held in higher esteem than the more practical models – it has ever been thus.
Indeed, quite a few of these mini-exotics can still be bought for sums within or at least close to our Prime Find budget – our own Dave Leadbetter found one just a few weeks ago. They’re very pretty cars and I wouldn’t mind owning one myself, but not for the first time in this piece, I digress…
Incidentally, Pininfarina weren’t the only Italian design house to get their hands on the FIAT – Ghia also created a very aggressively (slightly ungainly) styled coupé called the 1500GT, producing 800 examples, though I’ve never seen one.
The saloons were pretty standard machines – front engine, rear-drive, four-speed, four door, four or, at a pinch, five seats, decent sized boot – the usual medium-sized characteristics of a mass-produced car. The 1300 produced 60bhp, the 1500 an extra 13bhp, but performance was considered exceptional, especially from the 1500, which could hit 93mph, a step up from the likes of a Cortina Mk1 1500’s 82mph, for example, or when compared to the equivalent Sunbeam Rapier – marketed as a sports saloon – the Italian was two seconds quicker to 60mph, taking 14.6 seconds (the Cortina took twenty). Other alternatives to the FIAT would have included the Ford Taunus 12M, and the Simca 1301/1501.
The competition
You could say that bar their exceptional performance, these FIAT’s were ordinary in every way, but I would have to disagree, primarily because of the styling details. While ostensibly a fairly sqaure standard three-box saloon, it was – and is – touches such as the eyebrow-ed twin-headlamps, big glasshouse, chrome strip that runs all the way around the car’s low waistline and neatly integrated rear light clusters that make this apparently ordinary FIAT a very characterful car indeed, at least to my eyes, and their appeal was clearly quite broad – until production ceased in 1967 (in Italy, anyway). 1.9m examples of the range were sold in total, most of them the saloon. The only significant change was the introduction of the 1500C in 1964, a longer wheelbase car that was given a little more power, taking output up to 75bhp.
I should add at this point that that figure includes versions of the car built in the former Yugoslavia by Zastava (who built it as the Zastava 1300 and 1500 until 1979, producing just over 200,000 examples) and Argentina, where it was given the very original name of the Argentino, as well as those built by FIAT’s own factories in Turin and Neckarsulm by FIAT’s German subsidiary, Neckar Automobil AG and in South Africa.
Back to my hunt for a Prime Find… while it was proving difficult to find a Berlina in decent condition, I did find not one, but two very smart examples of the estate, or Familiare. What was particularly interesting – to me at least – was that these were not built by FIAT, but by OSI, a very handy abbreviation for Officine Stampaggi Industriali. OSI were yet another in a long line of Italian coachbuilders, intended as an independent branch of Ghia. The company only lasted until 1969, but in that time built some very pretty versions of models from Ford, FIAT and Alfa Romeo, as well as the Austin-Healey Sprite-based Innocenti Spider and Coupé.
OSI’s work on the FIAT 1500 Familiare was more conventional and undramatic but nevertheless a success, at least in terms of styling. The conversion from saloon to estate is well integrated, no “glass box stuck on top of the boot” effect, and the C-post looks like it should be there, as opposed to been left there as something to work around from the saloon. The tailgate is especially neatly integrated, opening out onto a very useful flat load bay, even if not full width due to the tail lights being left in place rather than built into the tailgate.
Digressing even further, the OSI I remember the most was a catamaran-type design study called the OSI Silver Fox – and the reason I remember it is because it featured in one of my sets of Top Trumps cards when I was a boy. Their Alfa Romeo Scarabeo was also in that set… Søren Navntoft wrote about them here.
Okay… back to the FIAT 1500… and thanks once again to Motor Sports archive, we can read Bill Boddy’s impressions of the saloon from his road test in February 1962 and it’s fair to say he was impressed, especially by its performance. Boddy is also complimentary about the FIAT’s equipment levels, and other than some minor issues, is fulsome in his praise for the car – he concludes that the FIAT 1500 is an “exceedingly attractive car”, offering “exceptional performance” and “refreshing individuality” for the money; I’m starting to want one myself.
Another brief digression – I should point out that there was also a FIAT 1500L, and while this might have shared the same name – and same engine – as the FIAT 1500, it was basically a 1500 engine installed in the larger 1800/2100 saloon body, so not really part of the 1300/1500 range. Got that? Good.
This disjointed ramble has now finally arrived back at our Prime Find. Now most of what I’ve written above relates to the saloon, but while surfing through the classifieds, I spotted not one, but two estate versions which l think look really cool – more so than the saloon – and are also even less common.
The one I’ve gone for is on sale with a private vendor in Rosendahl in the German state of Nord-Rhein Westfalen, close to the border with The Netherlands. First registered in February 1966, it has 25,000km on the clock – almost certainly 125,000km in reality – but the car presents in very good and original condition, at least based on the photos. It’s in a nice – if safe – shade of off-white exterior with smart red leatherette upholstery, and the vendor states it to be completely original to the best of his knowledge, and displaying a nice patina.
The car is from a collection in the south of Italy and comes with its original Italian papers, but there’s no information on a broader history file, though the vendor says that he welcomes any questions. The price is a negotiable €11,850, or about £10,565. As a point of comparison, the other Familiare for sale is quite a bit more expensive, at £14,400, although I do prefer it’s colour.
I’m quite taken with this unusual Italian estate car – it looks cool, apparently drives well, and is certainly not a car you’re likely to see often, not even, it seems, at big Italian-themed car events. The link to the full advert is here, as are a few more photos. As always, we recommend arranging an inspection before parting with your hard-earned cash.
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk