Yes, I know we featured a FIAT as our Prime Find last week, but I make no apologies for featuring another one as our Prime Find for the second week in a row.
FIAT is a company that has made, and continues to make, the majority of its cars for the everyman and woman, and some of those cars have become classics of their kind. But the ones that have achieved genuine classic status are generally the sportier models, of which there is a pretty long list – some of my personal favourites include the 1200 and 1500 coupé, the 124 coupé, the 2300S coupé, the 850 coupé… and let’s not forget the FIAT Dino…. there seems to be a theme here…
Some of FIAT’s Greatest Hits
All of these stylish cars (except the Dino) were of course based on “cooking” saloons, some of them very ordinary and boxy – is there a boxier car than the FIAT 124? Nothing wrong with any of them, but it would be a stretch to say they were inspiring in any way.
It would be difficult to describe the 130 saloon as “cooking” – too big, luxurious, fast, and expensive – yet somehow still uninspiring with its straightforward linear three-box lines. But the coupé version, well, that’s another story entirely.
Before we get to that, though, a few words about the saloon. FIAT – and their Italian peers at Alfa Romeo and Lancia – have generally been better at making small-to-medium sized cars than executive models – these have always been better left to the Brits and Germans. The same is true of FIAT and the 130 saloon – clean but straight-edge lines, competent, quick and comfortable yet unexciting. A bit of a Q-car in some respects – after all, it was powered initially by a 2.8 and later a 3.2-litre V6 that pulled it along to a top speed of almost 120mph….but despite its admirable qualities, it was a sales failure, and even today, viewed through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, it’s still not seen as anything special, and you can pick one up (if you can find one) for very little money indeed, around half the price of its coupé sibling, itself not necessarily very expensive, as we shall see.
Ah, the FIAT 130 coupé… I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t profess admiration for this most elegant big two-door from Pininfarina, and that shouldn’t really be a surprise – I mean, just look at it; long and sleek, with a commanding presence, yet understated thanks to the lack of unnecessary adornment.
I love the narrow but wide Carrello headlights – unique to the coupé – and its stance on the road looks purposeful without being aggressive. Powered by a 3.2-litre V6 (all coupes came with this engine) that produced 165bhp, this big – 4.84 metres long and weighing 1610kg – car could reach 120mph, but by the standards of it’s competition, it wasn’t the best in out and out performance terms. The big glass house and slim roof pillars add to the car’s air of sporting elegance as it sits on its Cromadora alloys.
The interior… well, I differ with some of my ViaRETRO colleagues on this; I’m not a huge fan of velour upholstery, particularly the vivid orange, and were I ever to add a 130 Coupé to my garage, it would have to be one with the seats reupholstered in any of cream, black or grey, ideally in leather but velour in those colours would be OK, just not orange. Nevertheless, whatever the colour, it has an air of opulence that matches the stylishness of the exterior.
The dash and steering wheel though, these I like, and the fascia is a nice mix of traditional wood veneer and modern, straight-edged design housing the dials, something it shared with the saloon.
Contemporary alternatives to the FIAT were and are several – the BMW 2800CS and 3.0CSi, the Jaguar XJC 4.2 and XJS 3.6, the Mercedes-Benz 280CE and 350SLC, Peugeot 504 V6 Coupe, Opel Commodore B GS/E and Citroen SM to name but a few, with the Peugeot also designed by Pininfarina, though they are all – with the exception of the XJS, in my jaundiced view – very good looking cars. All were and are proper Grand Tourers, able to seat four and take their luggage across Europe in style. Good E9’s are now in the £40,000-plus bracket, but good examples of all the others can be found for quite a bit less, though the Gamma, Commodore and 504 are even harder to find – certainly in the UK – than the 130.
Plenty of big ’70’s coupés to compete for your wallet, then and now
The 130 saloon was launched in 1969 as the successor to the 2300 – another fine-looking car in coupé form in particular – and while production of the saloon ended in 1976, the coupé, introduced two years later, was built for another year, with a total of 4491 examples produced.
While the coupé is not quite as scarce as the saloon – perhaps there are more around because of its desirability – it’s still a hard car to find; only about fifteen remain in the UK, all LHD.
Road testers were generally complimentary about the 130 in both its incarnations, but the coupé’s styling was always in its favour whenever comparisons were made, yet despite all the praise, and high-profile celebrity owners such as Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni and one of the UK’s greatest vocalists, Dusty Springfield (hers had gold-plated door handles), sales were never quite what FIAT hoped for unfortunately, and production ended with them deciding not to replace the 130 directly, but – having fully integrated Lancia in 1969 – doing so with the Lancia Gamma coupé, also from the house of Pininfarina and a worthy successor, though I think I’d still edge towards the FIAT.
A brief digression – gorgeous as the coupé is, it’s not the most beautiful 130; that distinction goes to a car that FIAT sadly chose not to put into production, the absolutely stunning three-door Maremma shooting brake. Only three were made, what a shame there weren’t more.
Back to the coupé and to our Prime Find… it’s on offer with a dealer based in London, and surprisingly, it’s one of no less than five currently for sale in the UK; if it’s true that only around 15 remain here, I’m not sure what that says about the car, to have as many as a third of them on sale at the same time…
Now while I don’t mind silver as a colour, it’s not very exciting, and each of the cars available in the UK within our budget is silver… so I’m going to break with unofficial protocol – just a little – and pick an example in a lovely dark violet (Rosso Corsa) that suits the car beautifully, subtly accentuating its graceful lines and just more interesting than silver, period. It also retains its plush velour upholstery but in a much more preferable and less retina-searing – to me, at any rate – and more subtle dark grey rather than orange.
This example has also had a fair amount of work done recently, including a full repaint, re-upholstered seats and new carpets, so three pretty major items that the new buyer won’t need to worry about if they’ve been done well.
Another bonus – to me, at least – is that this 130 has a 5-speed ZF manual gearbox, giving this large car a bit of a performance edge over the automatic version, which the majority came with.
Originally registered in Spain, this gorgeous coupé has had just a couple of owners and covered a relatively meagre 88,000kms or 55,000 miles, and has an asking price of £22,500, so with a little haggling might end up very close to our theoretical budget.
Not so long ago, you could buy a very decent 130 coupé for under £10,000 – those days seem to be gone, however, as the car is recognised more and more as a genuine classic, regardless of the badge, yet it remains a pretty undervalued car even now, with very good examples such as this one still available for between £15 – 25,000, though the very best can now reach good E9 territory; indeed, a fully-restored one was sold on the Salvage Hunters car programme in the UK for £42,500, believed to be a record price for a 130 coupé at the time.
I really like this car a lot – and I’m quietly confident that these superbly stylish and exclusive coupés will soon catch up with the E9 in the price stakes. If only I had the room… or the spare cash…
As usual, we’ve borrowed a few photographs from the dealer’s website and you can see the full advert here – the usual caveats apply.
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