(first posted 6/1/2017) Road and Track tests the new Fiat 131 Mirafiore (“Brava”), which replaced the 124. Although the 131 was very successful in Europe and other locales, it failed to make serious inroads in the US and led to the decline and eventual withdrawal of Fiat from the US market. Why? The Japanese had made huge inroads, and their cars were inevitably more reliable. It was the death-knell for an otherwise quite competent car.
This road test was responsible for my seriously considering trading my Audi Fox for a Fiat 131 (I was once a sucker for “the next big thing in cars”). The Fox had a lot of great engineering to it, but it also had a lot of niggling faults.
Back then, cars were (well, at least foreign cars) considered to be a roll of dice. And
I had a co-worker with a Fiat 850 coupe that I wished I could own. I didn’t know anyone who had anything bad…or really good, to say about Fiats. I even knew what color of 131 I wanted and often cruised by the dealership to look at “my” car.
But when push came to shove, I went with a Ford Pinto, instead. The Pinto was dead reliable and dead boring.
I had a neighbor who was a WWII vet who spent the immediate post-war period driving around Western Europe in what must have been a pre-war MG. He bought an Audi Fox in the mid-’70s. It put a damper on his automotive adventurousness, and IIRC he followed it up with a Ford LTD-II. Eventually he bought a diesel Rabbit and a Subaru, so the Fox wasn’t enough to completely sour him on imports. OTOH, maybe the Ford was bad enough to convince him that he’d might as well drive what appealed to him. I got to know him well in later years, but we mostly talked about women and booze instead of cars.
“Competent”? Et tu, Paul? I can see the tweed jackets at Road and Track. When this article came out, I would hang on Car & Driver’s every word–and R/T to a lesser extent.
But if a car cannot run, it’s not competent. “Not bad” would have been better.
As an adult who needed a car, and who is frugal, I came to see why the Peugeots and Fiats, and even Audis (of the 70s) of the world did not make it here in the big PX.
They were too expensive up front, required frequent and expensive maintenance and repairs.
Car and Driver compared a Nova in 1975 to a Peugeot 504, Volvo, Audi 100, Saab, etc. The Nova was primitive, but, even for a car lover like me who like to change his own gears, it would have been hard to justify double the cost.
No worries, you are still a giant among us car trivia nuts! I like this website, and I hope to meet you this weekend!
Was it because they were expensive and somewhat unreliable that the likes of Peugeot and Audi failed to make inroads into the US market in the 1970s, or can some of that failure be attributed to a limited dealer network and/or an unfamiliar brand name? Cars from Mercedes-Benz and BMW have historically been expensive to purchase and to maintain as well, yet these two brands managed to succeed in creating a market niche and remain successful to this day.
Fiat is somewhat of a different case, and one where I would tend to agree with you more: economy-car makers have less leeway when it comes to high costs, as cost is the primary motivator in most economy car purchases. So if an initially cheap car is unreliable and expensive to maintain, it somewhat defeats the purpose of having bought it in the first place. But for more expensive cars, I don’t think reliability and upkeep costs weigh quite as heavily in buyers’ minds — it’s more perceived quality and brand name cachet that sell in this segment.
Also, the Nova didn’t really compete in the same class as the 504/Volvo/Audi 100/Saab. Those other cars were more expensive not just because they were imports, but because they offered things the Nova could not: like better ride/handling and build quality, as well as being more luxurious. So yes, the Nova was considerably cheaper, but there were reasons for that lower price tag.
It was an ‘up-level’ Nova. It may even have been the oafish-looking 1974.
Of course, it was cruder than the Europeans (though it shared the same platform with the Camaro/Firebird, which were very good examples of solid-axle leaf spring cars). And the Nova was THIRSTIER by far.
I’m just saying, one really had to appreciate the Euro cars, since they cost considerably more and were more of hassle to keep on the road.
I thought that the magazine tested a post-1974 Nova – either a 1975 Nova LN or a 1976-77 Concours (which was promoted as an entirely separate model by Chevrolet).
Funny, all this talk of the Nova for comparison. My folks briefly had a ’76/77 Concours (a rebrand of the top-trim 4th-gen Nova LN) that replaced their prior ’71 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe, as my sister and I had grown too big for that to remain practical.
They haaated that Chevy, even tho’ it was in good condition and still fairly new and low-mileage, only owned it less than a year as a stopgap until they could find a more suitable car for our growing family that they liked far more, which turned out to be…
A 1979 Fiat Brava (nee 131) station wagon, metallic mint-green. Dad negotiated a great deal on that car too, as he’d seen it languishing on the dealer’s lot for a year or so and knew they wanted it Gone. Went in with a rock-bottom offer and stuck to his guns, staunchly refusing every counter-offer, even started walking out the door before the owner of the dealership, defeated and morose, called after him to accept.
That car served us quite well for the next 7 years or so, even taking two-week cross-country road trips to visit family every summer without incident. I can only remember it going to the shop a few times, most of those probably to get the timing belt changed on schedule. Finally by ’86 or so the bottoms of the doors were starting to rust out from Nebraska’s salted winter roads, so he sold it to a work colleague who already had a ’78 SuperBrava wagon.
Oafish-looking! Ouch!
Two things I always thought about that ’73-4 facelift – why did they spend so much money reshaping the rear doors and C pillar on the 4-door to a curved line mimicking the just-superceded ’68-72 A bodies’ when the earlier look was fine, and did Buick pinch Chevy’s originally-intended face for the Apollo leaving Chevy to cobble something up at the last minute?
I tried very hard to buy one of these from a guy in Nashville. He was asking $400, the car was in perfect condition except for the non-running engine, and I knew where to get that part set straight. Unfortunately, the man turned out to be a paranoid nutcase; when I tried to leave a deposit check with his son and leave word that I’d be back with cash later in the week, he called me that night in a raging fit because I’d tried to pass off a bum check and steal the car … never mind that (a) it didn’t run, and (b) I had driven over in my wife’s 2002. He ordered me to stay the hell away from his house, car and family, to which I readily assented.
I really did want to rescue that poor Fiat, but couldn’t figure out how to manage it, and certainly didn’t want any of my friends having to deal with this lunatic. I still have a 131 on my Want List, though …
I knew a girl in college who had a new 131. It was always in the shop and even in north central Florida it rusted like there was no tomorrow. Two years later she replaced it with a Cutlass Supreme.
I had a friend who had a Fiat. It too was always in the shop for one thing or another. For him, FIAT stood for “Fix It Again Tony.”
Then he replaced it with a Ford, which lived up to the moniker, “Found On the Road Dead”. He swore never to buy another car that started with a “F”.
I worked in a Fiat-Lancia dealership when these were current, and they weren’t all that maintenance intensive. The Lancias, on the other hand…Seriously, if you kept a 131 or Brava tuned, changed the oil regularly, and watched the timing belt (we used replacement belts from Bayless in Atlanta), it would give you a long life and a hell of a lot of fun. My brother had a 131 while I had a VW Dasher, and his car was much the more durable of the two.
I don’t remember ever seeing one of these in person, though I did come across one for sale on my local craigslist a few years ago.
I guess I just don’t get the Fiat hate. Most of the ones that were problematic were due to being “rode hard and put up wet”. They were inexpensive cars, but treated cheaply by many owners. The reality was, if maintained regularly, they would do pretty well. The lack of a good dealer network did not help, but compare against a Vega/Chevette/Pinto/Cricket from around the same time, and other than being able to source parts at your local Chevy/Ford/Plymouth dealer and get them serviced there, too, was the quality really much different?
Well, let’s start with RUST. Nothing rusts like a Fiat from the 1970’s. There’s a reason for that: Russian Steel.
The [Soviet Union’s] 5-year plan in 1966 called for establishing a national car maker …. Substantial help was given by FIAT chairman Giovanni Agnelli II, one of the rare Western friends of the communist USSR. In exchange for cheap Soviet steel, FIAT helped designing the Togliatti plant and offered the blueprints of FIAT 124 to form the basis of the first Russian people’s car….
http://www.autozine.org/Manufacturer/Russia/Avtovaz.html
Next, the truth is that maintenance requirements were much higher – I had a friend who drove his 60’s slant six Dodge with the oil light on for a year until the day I borrowed his car and checked the dipstick myself. I put four quarts of oil in, and the light went out. Try that stunt on a 1400 cc engine turning 5,000 rpm. Timing belts? Only one American car even had a timing belt in the 60’s and it was gone by the 70’s. It’s also true that Fiat components aren’t the best quality. Fiat kept cost and weight to the absolute minimum.
Finally, let’s about the metric system, or more specifically, metric wrenches. Very few people, indeed, very few mechanics in the U.S. had them. Even then, just having a set of metric wrenches because you worked on an air cooled VW once or twice didn’t prepare you to fix an Italian engine.
So, few mechanics could (or would) even work on the cars at all, and most of those didn’t know what they were doing. This was especially true outside major cities on the coasts. Then there was a problem of knowing what parts to order – and knowing where to get them. (By the way, God help you if the part you need is in Italy and in August even God can’t help you). So your car could be laid up for a long time.
So, Fiats WERE less reliable than most American cars* and were much harder to keep running because the same minor problem fixed in a day wasn’t a minor problem if you couldn’t get any one to fix it.
*It took the introduction of the Vega to bring American cars to the quality and reliability level of Fiats.
The Chevette article (from this same issue of R&T?) got me thinking – Chevettes really didn’t rust like most of their contemporary small, lightweight unibodies.
True! ?
Fair enough, but again, I don’t see the same hate applied to the rusting issues that were remarkably similar on most makes of the 50s to the early 60s, albeit for different reasons for the rust. I also can an see issue with finding a mechanic to work on them, but was that really an issue with the car or was it the problem of cheap shops not investing in tools needed and mechanics that would not or could not learn the differences in these cars versus American ones? The maintenance requirements for the Fiat were similar to any other 4 cylinder car of the times, and the slant 6 you mention was notoriously bulletproof, even compared to other American engines of the day. Parts and dealerships were an issue, but that was true with any imported cars of the 50s and 60s and the reason that most Europeans backed out of the market. So why does everyone pile on Fiat? Were they worse than Renault, whose Dauphine briefly ruled the import market in the USA? Or Citroen, whose suspensions could give both cushy rides yet explode and leave you stranded? Or any British marque, whose electronics would breathe smoke and do little else? Yes, I get that they were not excellent cars, but none of the cars offered by others were either, and not at the price point of a Fiat. So again, other than consensus by “the masses”, why the hate piled on Fiat more than the others?
You won’t hear me piling on, Italian, French and Britsh cars are the only European cars that hold any interest to me. And Japanese cars hold almost no interest to me. Perhaps I’m weird!?
I’m late to the party and really cannot answer the question with any authority, but I do remember a fair amount of Fiats of this vintage in my area that seemingly met an untimely demise when the timing belt broke. My Aunt had one such car… a 1976 128 wagon that was parked in the yard for many years in limbo after the cambelt broke. I guess she deemed the car too new/low mileage/too good to throw away due to a thrashed engine, yet it wasn’t quite worth it to put a new engine in it and return the car to the road. It eventually sat for enough more years to finally tilt the scales in favor of sending it to the wrecking yard. Fiats did get a bit rusty in our area (lotsa snow, but no salt), but that pistons/valves occupying the same place at the same time seemed to be the common killer.
Common sense sez replace the timing belt at the specified intervals, and especially so when its failure will take the engine with it (unlike a Chrysler 2.2 or a Vega), and Fiat did have short replacement intervals. If you don’t like it… buy something else? People don’t always think like that, and many are probably going to treat the car like any other low cost economy car. My Aunt ended up with a 1980 Buick Skylark next, and say what you might about a GM Iron Duke, they’re a blunt instrument that’s hard to break. I’ve never asked her about the 128, but I’m sure she felt burned… “that stupid Fiat blew its engine when it was only 4 years old!”
I’m someone who bought and depended on an old Renault 12 wagon in the 1990’s, and have a hard time coming to grips with why someone might hate that car. It had been parked due to a dead fuel pump in 1986, and incurred some other damage while it sat. Once repaired, it turned out to be a steadfast little squirt with more comfortable seats than any other car I’ve owned. I found that normal wear parts sometimes took a concerted effort to track down, and sometimes cost more dearly than I’d have liked. I’ve always worked on my own cars, but did get a feeling that many mechanics would’ve hung up the phone before you could utter the second syllable in “Renault”. Was it worth it to me? Yes. Was it worth it to someone else? Not likely.
A friend of mine in college had one of these new in Boston. She let me take it to get some supplies for her architectural thesis presentation which she putting together at the last minute. It was an absolute hoot to drive in Boston with it’s high rev engine. I loved it.
Yes, Boston has a “reputation” with regard to drivers. That’s where I learned to “drive”. When I moved away, I had to unlearn all my bad habits (I was scaring all my passengers). Of course when I go back to Boston, those “survival” tactics all come back.
Thank you for posting…. fond automotive memories.
A yes, 1970’s Fiats…..
These things didn’t just rust, they literally dissolved before your very eyes. A friend of my fathers bought a Super Mirafiori. Driving home from taking delivery of his new Fiat it began to rain, so he switched the wipers on. The passenger side wiper fell off. At the seven month mark a visible rust bobble appeared where the shaft for one of the wipers comes through the bodywork. The dealer kindly informed him that the warranty for ‘surface rust’ expired at 6 months.
The Fiat 131 briefly appeared in the 1978 movie “COMA” . A great SiFi movie for its day.
The problem was that’s the only time I saw a FIAT 131 because it was absent on the streets of New Orleans which had its share of 128 and Spiders. Right after graduated from college, FIAT disappeared from the radar scope!! So I ended up getting a Cutlass Supreme.
However, I will confess that I have my eye on a FIAT 500 POP. Could turn out to be a COAL experience in itself!!
I am a bit biased (see the above posts), but I have a 2015 Fiat 500 Pop and love it. I have had 0 issues, mileage always 35-40 mpg average (commuting to work), and tons of fun. Go for it if you want one. It is not the most practical car, but it is one of the more fun ones. Just get a manual and avoid the automatic if you want to have a better driving experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhLKMFlNW_Y
An old dealer short introduction video for the 131.
“Increases in quality and durability.” What were they smoking at R&T to say that? Likely dreaming a fantasy! BTW regarding 1970’s Italian car rust, based on personal experience of observing my two friends’ Alfa’s, nothing could rust faster than an Alfa, not even a FIAT. Within two years I saw their Alfa GTV6 simply dissolve to heaps with gross failure of the DeDion rear suspension mounting points due to terminal rust. But while they ran well early in their lives, those V6’s was fantastic. I had the pleasure of driving their GTV6’s on occasions The terminal rust was nothing short of criminal for otherwise great cars. When we weren’t crying, the fenders, doors, and rear quarter panels were laughably horribly rusted through within two years. Just amazing rust. A least another friend’s sister’s FIAT 124 Spider outlasted the ALFA’s by surviving three years before she surrendered to buying an Olds Cutlass.
I didn’t know the 131 had ‘pure’ MacPherson strut front suspension. The only cars of the ’70s that I knew about which had it were the BMW E21 and Triumph TR7. I wonder if the FIATs were as prone to incurable wheel shimmies as the others? I also didn’t realize these had rear drum brakes. My 124 Sport Spider had identical brake discs at all four corners, which I figured was an economy move on FIAT’s part. It seemed like most of their US line was using one brake disc, caliper, and pad, which must have cut down on inventory and logistical costs.
We were a Fiat family for a long time, a 1500 then a 125S. The 131 was a let down, where were the 4 wheel discs and DOHC engine? Rear drums and a pushrod engine were not going to cut it. Dad passed on the 131 and bought a Lancia Beta.
For whatever reason, the Australian version of the 131 didn’t get the DOHC engine until later on.
The 125 came after the 124 here twin cam 1600 engines and good handling they were a natural for production saloon racing with Torino motors making a 125 T model specifically for the Benson and Hedges series, the 125S with all the extras was locally assembled too and the look alike Lada came in too,
the 131 wasnt so highly thought of as the 125
A few things….the first generation 131 Mirafiori as tested in the article was not called the Brava in the US until the 1978 1/2 refresh where Fiat brought two versions, one with the updated interior called the SuperBrava and one with the original interior simply called the Brava. For 1979, Fiat USA axed the base Brava model and confusingly renamed the SuperBrava, the Brava.
The original 131 Mirafiori was somewhat of a success in the US at first, maybe not to what Fiat had hoped but in 1976 they had their best year in the US to date selling over 100,000 cars. As the quality issues across the line increased as well as the fact that the 131 was NOT front wheel drive which is where the market was heading at the time, sales began to drop off dramatically.
I would say that the eventual withdrawal from the US market in 1982 was also caused by an ancient product line with three of the four US bound cars being over eight years old and the only ‘newer’ one, the Strada (Ritmo) too odd for US tastes.
As far as the Russian steel goes, my family’s 1978 1/2 SuperBrava began rusting within the first year of ownership. We also had to have the entire driveshaft replaced under warranty that first year and the AC needed to be fixed every year. That said, it is still one of my favorite cars…
My second car, purchased at age 17 for $2300, was a then 5-year old orange 1975 131 Mirafiori 4-door just like the one in the test, but w. 47k miles, I kept the car eight years and sold it for…wait for it….$2200. At which point it had 105k miles but still looked pristine, thanks to my (and my Dad’s) obsession with car care and Saturday morning maintenance. My Dad had an older Type 4 VW 411 (we were quirky) and traded it in on a new 1980 Fiat 131 Brava, a poshly-updated if under-powered version of my car. Both were quite reliable by the standards of the day, and my car set my lifelong benchmark for handling, spirit and chuckability. It was a great driver. We were in Vancouver so no rust or sun-fade issues – both cars were garaged and in the Lower Mainland it is fairly easy to keep a car looking good. The “Fix it again, Tony” stuff was always nonsense, caused by Fiat’s infamously bad dealer network; our local Fiat dealer was investigated for rolling back odometers. The multi-make dealers selling them didn’t really understand the cars and mechanic-run gas station dealerships (these were a thing) came and went like the wind. After Fiat left NA in the early 80s our indie mechanic in Vancouver’s Little Italy became a local Lada dealership and beirfley carried Innocentis when they were imported in the late 80s (everyone has to earn a living). The Fiat dealer nearest my folks became a Skoda dealer for the couple of years they were sold in Canada and then carried Suzuki cars….
“…But if a car cannot run, it’s not competent. “Not bad” would have been better.”
But not appropriate. If a car cannot run, it does not fulfill its core reason for existing. So, “Not good” would be proper.
In early 1983 I very nearly became a 131 Brava owner. While shopping with an imminent need for a new vehicle, I found a very left over 1981 Brava at a notoriously oily Buick/Fiat dealer. The sticker price had been dramatically reduced. As a last year US 131, it had the 2.0 lt. and was FI. It even had A/C. As we had had just gotten away from my first wife’s 1976 Fiat 128, I was having serious reservations. The 128 had frequent need for fiddling and went through suspension components and exhaust systems regularly. Parts were almost shockingly cheap for oem. She had purchased it new, as a very leftover for well under $3000.
I believe that Fiat was gone in the US by 1983, There were a few Strada/Ritmo, X1/9 and Spiders still on lots. Whether or not warranties would still be honored was a big concern to me. Cooling my ex-wife’s Fiat love a bit, we bought another super leftover, a 1982 Ford Escort GT. The GT had a preposterous sticker price for a 1982 Escort, so it took a dramatic reduction to find their huckleberry.
Federal 5 mph bumpers are working well with the boxy shape. Though I’ve never been a fan of FIAT (“already rusting in the brochure”), I always had a strange soft spot for the 131.
I’ve always rather admired the almost aggressively boxy, and otherwise quite geometric, styling of these. It has a rather draftsmanlike purity to it, no-nonsense and clean, yet still somehow stylish in the manner of other Italian industrial designs of the era.
The 4-door is clearly the original design, from which the 2-door and wagon were then derived; note the almost perfectly trapezoidal greenhouse, and how the little upkick in the beltline at the rear door continues slightly past the shutline and then swoops back just behind and parallel to the window frame to form the extraction vent, such an elegant little detail:
Besides reliability woes and rust that stood out even for its’ time, I wonder how much it was a case that the action moved down a segment where the Fiat 128 was already holding its’ own and the Toyota Corolla becoming the 500-pound gorilla just as the VW Rabbit changed everything…evenutally…once its’ own teething troubles were worked out.
Always loved Fiats, but since the Erie, PA dealer was only a 1/2-step above the Renault dealer (both working out of converted service stations), I never quite had the guts to step away from my then Vega and later Monza. Johnstown, PA had absolutely nothing in the way of Fiat dealership or independent support. Buy one of those, and you might as well be buying a Ferrari, because that’s how the local mechanics would look at it.
By 1983, three years into my first marriage, Fiat was gone, and I get a call from my father (by that time 18 years out of the Chevy dealership) who, somehow, thru his contacts had managed to get word on someone selling off left over new Bravas VERY cheaply. And suggested I should look into one. I was stunned. First off, my father was the poster child for a Sixties furrin’ car hater. And to suggest something to me with no support, and a marque with an infamous reputation just didn’t sound like him.
If I was single, I would have probably dived on it, if only as a second play toy. As I was married to someone who didn’t like cars in the slightest, and considered a driver’s license as one of those unfortunate necessities best categorized along with a certain physical condition she went thru monthly, I passed.