This cheerful 1970 Fiat 850 Spider has apparently been in storage for 40 years before being recently released from its long-term hiding spot. The 850 is a rear-engined design and has been remained a largely affordable choice in the vintage car marketplace if you’re seeking an Italian-built classic with memorable styling and a sporting driving experience. The seller claims that despite its period of inactivity, the Fiat runs, drives, and stops as intended, and that the 53,338 miles showing is believed to be genuine. With great colors and a soft top that appears to be in good order, this one seems like a bargain. Find it here on eBay with bids to $3,650 and no reserve.
The 850 and its derivatives have always been fairly cheap to buy, no doubt thanks to healthy production numbers and questionable reliability. Like every older Italian car, it does have its mechanical faults, but nothing that can’t be fixed by addressing typically deferred maintenance. The bigger issue is typically rust, with its fragile Giugiaro-designed sheetmetal susceptible to rust and rot-through, particularly on northern cars where quite a few were originally sold. I still see them in old-time junkyards, discarded after possibly an engine fire or simply a rough idle, sometimes attributed to something as simple as adjusting the valves.
While I always tend to skeptical of low mileage claims verified by nothing other than what the odometer says, the condition of the cabin would seem to validate the Fiat’s modest over the years. The seats, door panels, and dash all look to be in fantastic condition, particularly the fake wood trim, which shows very little in the way of deterioration. The cracked floormats aren’t a shocker, as those old rubber mats get brittle if you look at them the wrong way. The woodgrain-look surfaces and the crack-free dash are the best aspects of the cabin to me, as these areas usually perish in any vintage car prone to top-down driving.
Of course, being hidden away for 40 years should help any car survive in decent condition. The California blue plates are a dead giveaway that this Fiat hasn’t been used much, and the vintage dealer license plate frame may even be worth a few hundred bucks on its own. The taillight lenses are still deep red in color, and the chrome bumpers still present well. As a 1970 model, this generation of the 850 is a Sport model that benefits from an upgraded 903cc engine, but we’er not talking prodigious power ratings here. Still, more power is always appreciated in a car that didn’t come with much from the factory. Anyone bidding on this no-reserve survivor Fiat Spider?
I want to apologize to Kevin, and anyone else that loves these cars. He sure lambasted me for not liking them. I can take criticism , like someones hatred for K-cars, we don’t know why someone has good luck and another with bad. I’M saying, for ME, every Fiat I came in contact with was a POS. Comparing them to British cars, which I also love, isn’t exactly fair either. Now this Kevin says he runs a repair shop. Is that really a fair opinion? Most people DON’T run repair shops, it’s the bane of a car owner, how many Fiats do you repair, say compared to a Toyota or Nissan? I’m saying , there’s room for all our opinions as long as they’re cordial and I like some Fiats, it’s just the “lower end” models, like this model right here, I know from experience, was not a good car.
Hey Howard
The name of my shop is BIF Motors, I am lousy about keeping the web site up to date but here it is http://www.BIFMotors.com
These are great little cars with their flaws. Driveline wise they are great. The motors zing and you have to zing them to make them go. Transmission mounts will crack if you race/autocross them but these are easy to reinforce. And you have to keep the coolant system up to snuff.
Rust is the biggest enemy and unlike a lot of british cars from this era these are monocoque chassis and do not have a frame. There are two main areas of rust under the battery which can be repaired and the big X cross section under the car. If the latter is rusty the car is toast.
If you want a good bump in power drop in an Autobianci 1050. If you want to scare yourself and spend lots of money drop in a built twin cam.
This car looks pretty nice but would benefit from underchassis shots. Oh and the reason that the woodgrain on the dash looks nice and unsplit is because it is plastic.
These are fun cars and work well on country lanes and in tight city streets like they have in Italy. A 124 is a better car for the states, as it can keep up with normal highway traffic where the 850 will struggle. In the right environment they are a blast and on a tight autocross track they are a demon.
Oh Howard you have a better chance at calling a car guys girlfriend ugly, than saying something disparanging about his car
It’s not gonna be an everyday car, commuting from upstate NY to Manhattan, it’s a fun car to go out to a cruise night, or a Sunday show, nice n easy
Just an observation, you don’t see many fifty year old Toyota or Nissan either.
True , but they lasted a lot longer on the street as an everyday car than a Fiat did -Here on the East coast everything falls to the tin worm eventually, but Fiat steel was always the first to go
This was my first car. Same year, same color, many of the same flaws. Bought it for $200 in 1979 with a bad starter but otherwise running; sold it for $750 seven years later with antifreeze dribbling out of the tailpipe.
Brave owner to park it near water for the photos! Fiat had, due to their relentless development, nearly perfected fast rust by the time of this car – they were proud of producing the only cars that rusted due to exposure to sunlight, clean air, paint and leaking motor oil!
Amazing to find one in this original condition after so many years. Kevin is right, to get the most of this engine you have to wind it up tight, and the engine will do that. It is an around the town car, as it doesn’t have a lot of go up hills.
Drop on some upgraded parts to make it breathe better and it will give you more smiles to the mile.
FIAT was forced to buy up all the 850’s due to rust issues and the cars were subsequently crushed.
To find one in a no rust condition is worthy of cleaning up and putting on display at a car show.
The radiators were notorious for causing overheating from what I recall. I would love to have this car, but I haven’t any room in my garage! :)
Fiat was NOT “forced to buy up all the 850’s due to rust issues and the cars were subsequently crushed.” They rusted about as badly as Toyotas or Datsuns from the same era. You might be thinking of a big Russian steel scandal that nearly killed Lancia a few years later.
This is the lawsuit that resulted in FIAT buying up and getting rid of the cars for a safety recall that was issued because of rust issues. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1980/01/05/us-charges-fiat-failed-to-comply-with-recall/12460886-f1aa-4445-876b-0a214ce2a17e/
I worked for the remains of a Fiat dealer early 1980s and people would bring in the rusted remains of their recalled cars as per the Federally mandated recall. But we only cut them in half, we didn’t crush them so engines and transmissions were salvaged.
These are great cars! My brother drove one daily for years. My wife did the same. With both tops, it was like owning two different machines. Rust was the only negative and phosphoric acid combated that. The engine was truly bullet proof. Poor attention to basic maintainance caused the demise of many of these cars.
I agree with Rex. Staying ahead of the thing regarding maintenance will give you a lot of smiles and joy. It’s true they aren’t freeway killers and they have a tendency to faint going up hills but for around town and local transport they are terrific. All I can say is I sold mine to my neighbor who gave it to his daughter for school, and she is still driving it. We have an Italian mechanic in
town, and she has religion about taking care of it. Result? 96,000 miles or so, no major issues so far. She loves it.
These were high-maintenance cars. My wife called ours the Italian woman in the driveway. But if you follow the recommended service they hold up well. Unfortunately, the kingpin front suspension required a shot of grease every 2500 miles. And bad things would happen if you didn’t.
These cars didn’t have oil filters either. Instead it had a centrifugal oil cleaner. When you changed the oil, you were supposed to take the cover off the end of the crankshaft, clean out any goop, and pop the cover off. You have to remember that compared to the U.S., labor in Italy was cheap and parts were relatively expensive, so our cars had longer service intervals. Italians typically didn’t drive the distances that we do.
There were things that /would/ break regularly. In my Spider it was the throttle cable. But it was easily repaired, taking nothing more than a screw driver and less time to fix than it took me to write this. Just carry a spare. Even your mother could do it.
The other problem with these cars is that they were “cute,” and were called a “secretaries car.” Truth is they were a high performance car, with a two-barrel Weber carburetor, four-into-one exhaust header, and an ability to go to its 7000 rpm redline, which it would reach in fourth gear. In the early ’70s when I owned my Spider, I had to meet ships coming in from foreign, and when the sailors from an Italian ship saw my car on the pier, they about went crazy. I was an instant hero.
But in the time I owned the car, I had only one rust problem. The “muffler” such that it was rusted of the header–it was all one piece–and at $70 was expensive in early ’70s money. So I ran the car for about two years with a straight pipe. It made wonderful noises. And although I was stopped for speeding twice, I didn’t get cited for noisy exhaust, and I also said with a smile that I was just trying to keep up. True story.
Hey, Jeff. Where is this car located?
really enjoyed 3 or 4 in-a-row as they came out. Same idea as the karmen ghia, a nice lookin, yet good handelin lill ‘sports car’. Urged me onto the 124 ( same 4 or 5) & a 128, ending w/a Lancia Beta Coupe in late 80s. Just like chevy up grade to buick (but not caddy – a farrari or lambo).
Buying this car as a daily, I’d say “No problemo” as its like the modern cars (but less safety items than say its cousin a late model miata…