42 New Zealand Classic Car | themotorhood.com
T
ony Reid owns a couple of Fiat coupés —
or, as the Italian marketing specialists of
Fiat named the model, Coupé Fiats. The
company has a long history of making
striking coupé models, and, even if this one
doesn’t fit everyone’s idea of beautiful, it is undeniably
remarkable.
Tony’s answer to the question of why he owns
them includes a story about going to buy a Lancia
Beta Volumex coupé. At that point, he saw one of
the Coupé Fiats among the crowd of cars for sale
and bought that instead. Given the Lancia model’s
propensity to end up as bucketful of rust flakes after
a couple of years of ownership, he probably made the
right decision.The backstory
The story of these two Fiats, though, starts almost 100
years before they were made. It would not be unreasonable
to imagine that the language of romance and opera could
have given us something more imaginative than the word
‘FIAT’, standing for ‘Fabbrica Italian Automobile Torino’,
as the name of its cars, but, today, the word ‘Fiat’ has
taken on a life of its own.Bangle’s design was as eye-catching as it was debatable at the time.
From low down, the front is exquisite.Right: In standard
form the 5 cylinder
20 valve engine
produces 216 bhp