Date:         Fri, 5 Oct 2001 20:15:14 -0400
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject:      Re: Any Fiat Spider owners out there?
In-Reply-To:  <3BBDE95C.32D9EAE3@eoni.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> recently traded a used Bus engine for a '76 Fiat 124 Spider Convertible
> (also sold as an Alfa Romeo Spider)

> Sorry Ron, the Fiat 124 was never sold as an Alfa.


Sorry, lack of proofreading and a fast hand on the "send" key...

Alfa inadvertantly rolled off of my fingers because Fiat owns them and they
also have a Spider, but the sentence should have read:
"also sold as a Pininfarina Spider", not an Alfa Romeo Spider.
Pininfarina made the body of the Fiat Spider, and also marketed the car
under their own name in the early 80's.

In the U.S. the Pininfarina version was imported by Malcolm Bricklin, who
also brought us two other automotive marketing failures - the Yugo, and the
Subaru 360 (a tiny 2 cylinder rear-engined aircooled car with "suicide
doors" that predated Subaru's official entry into the U.S. market). The
latter is roughly as small as the BMW Isetta mentioned elsewhere in this
thread (as was Fiat's similar 500), but neither had a single front swing-out
door like the Isetta.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  (215) 234-VWVW
  www.busdepot.com