1974 Fiat 128 from North America - Comments

Let me count the ways this car failed: It wouldn't start below 32F unless it was humid and then it wouldn't start below 50F. The trunk lock broke. The clutch cable broke once in heavy traffic. All I could do was stop the engine immediately to keep from rear-ending the car in front of me. The parking brake stuck on necessitating having a towtruck drag the car out of a garage. At five years it was leaking a mixture of coolant and oil from the crankcase.

It was a fun car to drive when it ran. The most telling moment was when the mechanic had all the cars in his garage stolen except our 128.

I had one from 1974-1980 - a yellow 4 door. It was

cute and fun to drive, but very temperamental. I had

to carry extra clutch cables in the trunk, along with

tube patches. Because it was smaller than most cars in the US, I could not drive in the same tire tracks, so I

picked up lots of nails, in the tube tires. The car had

features that were ahead of its time, such as headlights

that went off when the engine was shut off, front wheel

drive, rear window defogger, and automatic seat belt switch. I liked the manual choke and throttle. In the

70s, I used it as a ski car, to haul my skis up to Wisconsin, during fierce blizzards. I didn't have too

much trouble with starting, but it was easy to push-start.

My first new car was a 1976 Fiat 128 Station Wagon; 1300cc power plant, 4-speed manual transmission, and luggage rack on top. I bought the car in September, 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee from a Fiat dealership. The test drive was wonderful, so I bought the car for $3200.00 brand new. Immediately upon leaving the dealership the car overheated due to a rotted hose. The dealership apparently did zero set-up preparation on this vehicle. So about an hour after taking delivery on my new car, it had new hoses and coolant.

I owned that car for a little over seven years, and 100K miles. It was the most fun to drive of any car I've ever had. Really great was that I could tune it myself (except for adjusting the valve tappet clearances). The '76 wagon was regularly overloaded with cargo, pulling small trailers, and such. Overall, the car was amazing in its ability to absorb punishment. The engine never used oil, even during a mid-summer move to Los Angeles from Cleveland, Ohio (I-80 almost all the way).

After 32K miles or so I learned to ALWAYS have a spare clutch cable on board, along with a flashlight and the appropriate nut driver. In all fairness, I have learned that the propensity of these clutch cables to fail at the ball end was most likely due to a poor electrical bond at the engine block end of the main ground strap. Lacking good conductivity between the ground strap and the starter motor, the clutch cable became the main starter motor ground, a job it did very well, but with massive corrosion implications. Sure wish I had been aware of that at the time. The wiring terminals were of generally poor quality which is a shame because the Bosch electrical components were strictly first rate.

At about 100K miles the original alternator ceased to function. By that time Fiat had ceased importing new cars to USA, and it was a 70-mile trip to Long Beach (I was lucky!) to trade-in my old alternator plus $120.00 for a rebuilt part. Shortly after that I sold the car.

All the above having been said, I would buy the car again in a second. In my youthful ignorance I was simply not aware of the above items that are, in retrospect, pretty simple stuff to correct. The two major design faults, in my opinion, were the method used to adjust valve tappet clearance (the steel disks) and the lack of a taller highway gear ratio.

My '76 128 was almost always reliable, and it was just plain fun to drive. I wish now that I still had it.

My Dad had two 128's when I was growing up. A 4 door and a station wagon, they were my favourite cars as well as my dad's. They did many thousands of hard miles in the unforgiving Australian terrain. The station wagon got wrapped around a pole and the 4 door died of excessive rust (we did live across the road from the pacific ocean!)

I bought my first Fiat in 1974 when I was 16. It was a red 128 two door coupe. I kept it for 6 years and put 60,000 miles on it. It was great fun to drive and I got compliments on it everywhere I went, especially at school. I never had any rust problems, and the engine was very reliable. It never left me stranded and it started every single time. The only real problem that I had were the seats. They started to split at the seams after about a year. It never burned oil, or gave me any electrical problems. It had Michelin tires that were still good after 60000 miles when I traded it in. The weber carburetor performed flawlessly and never gave a lick of trouble. I enjoyed the car until I traded it in for an X1/9 in 1980.