Since we’re celebrating small cars today, here’s a very unusual find posted to the Cohort John Lloyd. This is not a Fiat 850 Spider with a detachable hardtop. This is a Bertone Sports Racer, with a fixed hardtop. It’s a bit hard to know what the reasons were for Bertone undertaking this, but whatever it was, it’s lost in the mists of time now. The Sports racer did not have any more power than the regular 850 Spider, meaning 58 gross, 52 net hp from the 903cc four that was used in some of the years of production.
I’d love to know more about what the rationale for this car was, but in any case, it’s quite a looker. The 850 was attractive already and the shape of this hardtop suits it, plus the shape of the rear quarter windows is quite handsome. The only potential snag is that the black roof on a yellow car suggests vinyl (though it seems to have the correct shine for paint).
Nice find!
The first fixed-roof Bertone 850 body was actually shown as the one-off Fiat Abarth OTR 1000 at the 1965 Turin Motor Show. There’s not much out there, Wiki implies it went into short run production for homologation as the OTS 1000, but all the pics I can find of the OTS use the Fiat-derived coupe body.
Bertone must have taken the initiative to build them as road cars themselves, I don’t think Fiat would have been too enthusiastic about them, but still they must have supplied the internals.
my sister had one of these back in the early 70s.
the roof was like a simulated leather, not paint.
I had one too, in the 80’s. It was my first car and yes it had a vinyl roof. Mine had been removed and painted. I would love to have that thing now!! Poor little thing back fired & engine caught on fire.😢
I fail to see the point of this car, especially when Fiat already had a more practical 850 coupe for sale at the same time. A big part of the charm of the 850 spider was the fact that the top went down.
I much prefer this shape for an 850 tin-top.
+1 on that.
Credited as an in-house design, the truth is it was Felice Boano who penned the subtle sophisticated details.
Technically-speaking it is in-house as Felice and son were contracted to set up the Fiat Styling Centre. In truth, that’s splitting hairs. The Boano coupe is the best of the 850 bunch, except for this one…
I agree wholeheartedly. Boano was quite the artist, and a lot of his best work hid behind Centro Stile Fiat. That said, I cannot agree with you on the juvenile frog Moretti 😉
I love them. Baby Dino shape, still can’t decide which frontal treatment I prefer…
The thing about Fiats, is that pointless is kind of the point.
I’m old enough to remember when 850 Spiders were to be seen in most neighborhoods, at least 850s with sealed beam headlights anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Racer or any year or an 850 Spider with covered headlights in the metal though.
I’m not only amazed at the hardtop (it actually looks good, minus Vinyl too), but I’ve never seen one on the road that wasn’t almost completely rusted out.
Roomie in college had one and the engine fell out from the mounts due to rust, and he had one of the few good running ones.
Looks like an Avanti!
I admit to not knowing about this version of the 850, and can see its appeal, and also a clear link visually from the Spider to the Fiat Barchetta that appeared here recently.
Not the best basis for one but it could be interesting to build an Abarth rally racer out of an 850 Racer, just like Fiat did with it’s bigger “sister” the 124 Spider with it’s fixed hardtop roof and black hood and trunk lids.
Bertone actually did just that, and built up two Racers to compete in the 1969 Rallye de Monte-Carlo. Both retired. No further official support was given after this disappointing result.
The logic behind Bertone creating the Racer, and also its own Spider variants has to do with the fact that Fiat was skeptical that the market for the car in the US would be as large as it turned out to be. Bertone thought otherwise, and was able to convince Fiat to be able to sell the cars thru their distribution channel via Roosevelt Motors (of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. fame), but only if they would foot the bill to update the car to US regulations. After the initial success of the Spider, they decided to dust off their old Coupe proposal, as Don pointed out, and let them have a go in the marketplace. In the US, only 2,890 Racers were sold compared to 87,360 Spiders (the vast majority of both models sold worldwide). It is important to note, that in Europe, Fiat sold the 850 Spider on an order-only basis, and also granted Bertone permission to market their own version of the car, dubbed CL (Convertible Luxury). These had a much nicer spec compared to their Fiat ordered counterparts.
Wow, what a find. I was just reading about this car in a (way) back issue of Road & Track the other day and thought ‘too bad they’ve all rusted to death now.’ Apparently there a still a few left.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these… or was even aware of their existence. And I’ve owned two Fiat 124 Spyders (’72 1600cc, ’79 2000cc) so any Fiats within my field of vision tend to jump out at me and make me notice. Definitely seen 850 Spyders on the road (albeit not recently), and also a couple of the taller 850 coupes that Tonyola posted — but never the “chopped”-looking hardtop featured today.
Is it too much of a stretch to compare this Bertone Sports Racer to the Porsche 914? Because those had vinyl tops too 🙂