1986 Fiat Strada Abarth 130TC from UK and Ireland - Comments

Digiplex ignition unit went faulty each time it got hot (eg traffic jams, when worked hard)

Siezed calipers due to maintenance neglect.

Fairly significant structural rot hidden behind plastic body trim.

Carb insulator rubbers perished.

Long list of daft electrical faults.

I bought the Strada cheap with a view to re-using the engine in my other car. However, I decided against it because the car goes like stink, sounds great and is suitably anonymous to seriously embarrass the boy racer brigade at every set of traffic lights. It is also the last true Abarth and much of the car was hand-built in the Abarth factory.

The Strada is surprisingly economical (between 25-38mpg) but it is very difficult to drive economically. The standard Recaro racing seats are firm and beautifully comfortable to the extent that they cured my bad back!

The Fiat dealer network are to be avoided as they can't be bothered with a car this old, but there are a few good specialists who can provide parts and advice - be prepared to pay... Also, the Strada is fitted with twin twin-choke carbs as standard and there are very few mechanics around who know how to deal with them.

It's a fairly light car (925Kg ish) with a decent amount of power (150bhp ish) and demands some respect, especially on wet roundabouts - snap oversteer is not that far away.

Hi the cars power is actually 130bhp, hence 130tc. cheers.

I went through 2 gearboxes and the last box it had lost its reverse, it was still the greatest car I have owned.

Fiat Strada Abarth is a somewhat forgotten classic, faster than its contemporary rivals, but more temperamental coming with twin 40 carbs rather than fuel injection. Dubiously it's really the last car Fiat made before they got serious about building cars properly, therefore it suffers badly in the rust department (they weren't galvanised) and in reliability terms. A hoot to own now if you can find a decent one, and not cheap to keep on the road mind and parts becoming difficult to find.

I bought my red 130TC Abarth in 1986. I test drove the Renault 5 Turbo, followed by the 1.9 Peugeot GTI. I went my local Fiat dealership and took the 130TC out fro a test drive. I decided to buy it a second or so after reversing it out of it's parking space and was certain by before I had left the garage. I loved it. Fault wise for me it was faultless, however I passed it on to one of my chief engineers and it suffered camshaft failure, fixed under guarantee. The owner wrote it off with around 16,000 miles on the clock - he was forced to leave the road and hit a brick drive gateway support when a car coming the other way pulled out to pass a tractor. He was already adjacent to the front of the tractor and had nowhere else to go. The other driver drove off, leaving him to be taken by ambulance to hospital and with a completely destroyed car.

I loved the handling and the feel of the gearbox - I heard the gearbox was a Getrag or ZF, but I may be wrong. It felt direct, positive and chunky. I always felt it could do with a few more ponies and hearsay was that Abarth could turn it into a 170TC or 180TC. Again, it may be complete nonsense. It also could do with a limited slip diff as it wasn't hard to make the inside front lift off.