1984 Fiat Ritmo 105 TC review from Croatia

I bought the car at an unbelievably cheap price considering the fact that the body was completely restored and painted in a beautiful sky blue metallic. However, the engine was shot.

I rebuilt the engine, bored and polished the head, put Alquatti cams on it, larger carb etc.

I also converted the brakes - front to vented discs, rear from drums to discs.

After this the only problem I had was with the poor front suspension - the engine easily overpowered it and in corners it was oversteering like crazy even though it was stiff as heck.

The seats were awful, and build quality was less than desirable, even taking everything into account.

Very good fun to drive, at that time the best car I could have.

With the applied mods it was a real purist car - loud, stiff, quick, but not easy to drive in everyday city traffic.

It accelerated like a bat out of hell (I took many smiles off the faces of GTI, GSI, S16, HGT and other wannabe racers' drivers), top speed was limited by the short ratio gearbox (210 km/h at 7300 RPM).

However, the consumption was horrendous for my tiny student budget - in the city 12 - 16 l/100 km, on the open road - 9 - 12.