Who would have thought someone would pick a Porsche 928 or Bentley Turbo R as the car to be their low-cost daily driver for thirty years? Awesome! I suspect I didn’t word the question quite right, because I meant which car would get you through those thirty years with the very least amount of trouble, repairs and total expenses. Given that the responses included Rolls Royce, various Lincoln Marks, a 280ZX Turbo, Monte Carlo Turbo, 911 Turbo, Cadillac Biarritz…well, either I really didn’t make that clear, or you guys are just damn passionate and willing to do what it takes. Works for me. And the answers were certainly more colorful than the 1981 Corolla or Starlet I would have picked (for lowest total operating cost).
The reality is anything can be kept going, with the right attitude, maintenance and getting to know your car’s strengths and weaknesses. Like Gil Cormaci, who’s racked up over 500k miles on his 1980 Fiat Brava. He drives it 150 miles daily on his Southern California commute. And here’s what he says it takes to keep the Fiat rolling:
“Fiats are great cars, but were misunderstood and abused by drivers who didn’t properly care for them, Cormaci argues. He is in the process of restoring a 1969 Fiat Coupe.
“We actually had three Fiats,” Cormaci lamented. “We had a 128, but that isn’t with me anymore.”
The secret to Fiat immortality: “He attributed the longevity of his Fiat Brava to regular oil changes, routine mechanics visits and smooth, moderately-paced driving.”
Unfortunately, he may be the only one to do so. I’d love to find a Brava (or 128, 124 sedan or Strada) for a CC, but no such luck.
I went through a 1200, 1500 and an Osca 1600 back in the seventies. Take care of them and they’ll take care of you. I wish I still had the Osca but it went to a collector who has had it in mothballs since ’87.
I meant it when I said the Fleetwood coupe. I drive something almost as grotesque as a daily already, and it’s my second one!
This proves that with the right care just about anything can last forever. I’m guessing that his Fiat has a manual trans? Wonder how many clutches he’s went through?
Interesting you mention that: he converted it to manual from an automatic. How’s that for devotion?
I only had that thought pop into my head cause if I was going to worry about parts availability for something like a Fiat (being here in the US of A) I’d want it to be a manual, unless Fiat licenced an automatic design from a high volume manufacturer.
Don’t know about what they used for an automatic source back in the day, but the original article DID state he’d done so to reduce the rpm the motor had to be at when on the freeway and the 3spd auto kept it higher than he’d like so he ditched it in favor of a 5spd so he could keep the revs to about 3000rpm at best.
That’s one of the remedies to driving cars like his, no matter the model, make or year is that once they get above a certain amount of miles, keeping the revs low seems to help them last as parts get fragile as they age/wear and the likely of throwing a rod becomes ever more prevalent, amongst other issues that could kill of cars like this in an instant.
They came with the THM 180, same trans as a Chevette. Knowing GM’s luck with automatics numbered lower than 350 I’d say the manual swap was a wise choice.
Hey the THM125 was pretty good in my Celebrity but that was a FWD trans and you’re right Birddog, once GM tried to “lighten” up automatics they became POS for decades.
I should have worded that better, they did have decent luck with the 125. I think the125 was in production until the late 90s.
It was the RWD units that were troublesome.
It all depends what transmission you’re talking about. My father in a very misguided moment bought two wrecked ’80 Chevy Citations, intending to take two and make one. He gave up the idea because in no time at all their value as one complete car was less than as parts. And the parts in the most demand was the two automatic transmissions (were they THM325s?). We practically had a line at the front door wanting to buy them to replace blown units. FWD or RWD, GM had good examples of both.
Not a bad move on a car that is easy to find as an auto & hard as a manual, opens up a lot more candidates for consideration.
ps – 150 miles per day commute? That is a whole lot of time out of your life, not to mention cost even at US fuel prices
I don’t know about that Dan. Then automatic is infintely more trouble than a manual tranny. I mean, I’m on my 2nd. clutch on my 250k V8 302 Mustang. And that clutch was opened and ‘tightened up’ not a replacement.
I’m no spring chicken, but that clutch has been pulling me along thru my 20s and 30s.
Hey someone did pick the Starlet.
However a Panther even a Mark is proven to be cheap to keep even if it would require twice the fuel of the Starlet. Sure the Lincoln version is going to have power this and power that but since it’s common parts used for up to 30 years they are cheap and easy repairs if needed.
As for my choice of a Scout the diesel version and even the select gas version gets good fuel economy for what it is and it too is very cheap to keep if the rust monster is not involved.
When referring to any Scout, rust is a fantastically HUGE “if.”
And for a daily driver, as a former Scout owner, it would take a massive dose of automotive masochism.
Personally I’d rather drive a Scout II for 30 years rather than a Starlet. My Dad had a Starlet for many years so I have logged a number of miles in one of those too.
I have been driving Scouts for 15 years anyway. Not my sole driver but I usually put 8~10K per year on the pair. My 72 Traveltop is my normal everyday commuter from about this time of the year until usually around Apr or May or what ever it is that is going to break to signal the end of its season.
I’m seeing a little ’65 Fairlane in that front end.
These Fiats are actually quite (mechanically) robust. When I was in Turkey for a wedding, these were everywhere- and I checked some local classified ads, and they were selling with 200, 300, and 400 thousand km’s on them. I think the real secret to getting long life out of a Fiat is to live somewhere without any rain or snow.
I have a Yugo, and can honestly say that the mechanics are very robust- the engine is very well balanced and free revving. Aside from 2nd gear syncro, which needs replacing every 70K miles or so, they can go on and on. I should add that mine is the pushrod 903cc engine rather than the OHC engine. The other thing that tended to kill Fiats in the US aside from the rust and failure to change timing belts is the poor parts supply. Trim was unobtainable and very cheaply made. Indeed, Fiat trim was so cheap that in Europe people substitute soviet Lada parts because they’re actually better made than the Turin originals.
Yugos are the same, and if anything even more robust than Fiats thanks to that oh so thick Serbian steel. I think because Fiats and Yugos were quite cheap, they sold to the wrong kind of person- the type who otherwise would buy a Plymouth Sundance and thinks the ‘oil’ lamp indicates that it needs an oil change sometime in the distant future. Whilst the 2.2 K car engine can tolerate this abuse, Fiats are stroppy little divas, and do not like being neglected. Treat them well though, and they will reward for years. But just as you would not expect a fashion model to go out in slushy snow, neither should your Fiat.
Glad you mentioned the Yugo, I’ve always wanted one when they became available here in the states beginning in ’86 but never got a chance to get one back in the day.
The ones sold here only had the 1.1L and 1.3L OHC motors from the 128 instead (these being the GV, ne, Koral). The later ones only had the 1.3L and were fitted with Bosh Motronic fuel injection and were last sold here in 1991/92.
I’ve always suspected they were MUCH better built than people gave them credit for. Here in the US, people tended to think cheap=poorly made/disposable and thus treated these as such. A guy on Car Talk, a PBS program that runs on the weekends in many markets had a guy call in on his Yugo which got totaled when it have over 150K miles on it after it hit a dear in the mountains, I think his was an ’87.
I would agree, give any car, even a FIAT some modicum of care at the recommended intervals and it’ll reward you with reasonable reliability at the very least and will last you for a long time, barring any rust.
As to not driving your FIAT in the snow, very true for the older ones but the current models are MUCH more corrosion resistant these days.
Sorry. I put that theory to the test; on my very-own Yugo. It took all the maintenance I could give it; and then came up with a surprise problem that destroyed the engine.
SURE…if I’d just replaced the timing belt; the fan belt; looked over the shoulder of the mechanic who had just had the engine out replacing the clutch…I might have avoided it. But I could easier have avoided ALL of it, by simply not buying garbage.
This guy got lucky. Every car that’s known as a lemon, has a few devotees. Some of them are even rational; they just had individual rigs which beat the odds. But…no, not all cars with poor reps are neglected by owners. Some are; but in the case of the Yugo; the Fiats on which it was based, and many other European cars…the answer is much, much more complicated.
I don’t know what year yours was but by 1990 on through the end of their reign here, they were decently made and reasonably reliable.
There was a GV Plus floating around Seattle up until what, a year ago or so and that puts it at about 1990-91 that appeared to still run.
But like anything, given proper maintenance, the chances of it being anything remotely reliable improves.
And I’m not saying these would ever have been as reliable as a Toyota, but reliable enough to trust on a daily bases.
I also know of another fella who now has a Fiat 500 (the current US spec one, and a prima edizione at that) had a Yugo and had it for some 15 years and according to one former mechanic for those cars, by the end, their warranty rates were very good in terms of needed repairs under warranty.
Poor design and engineering cannot be overcome with “maintenance.” It wasn’t “poor maintenance” that had my 1978 Chevette, for example, to throw a rod at 30,000 miles. It was something else. Something that led former GM customers to look East.
And in the Yugo’s case it wasn’t “poor maintenance” that allowed an alternator belt to jump, and then get into the cover for the timing belt; and then pop it off. No…the Yugo had just had “maintenance” two days earlier – a replaced clutch.
Nor was it “poor maintenance” that caused the clutch to fail, on flat land, with 25,000 miles. And I’ve never cooked a clutch before or since. Poor design is a more likely suspect.
The same could be said of stripped wiper gears; of an intermittent current partial cut-out, that could only be REMEDIED with painstaking tracing of the wiring – to BYPASS a junction block and put a hot lead on the fuseblock. That wasn’t poor maintenance – that was re-engineering the wiring harness.
Want more? How does one “maintain” an exhaust system to keep it from failing at 23,000 miles and 18 months? How do you “maintain” the control cables in the heater box, to keep them from binding up – on a NEW car?
If you want a rare car for being rare, that’s fine. If you want a Yugo because it’s “significant” – have at it. A cheaper collectible I cannot imagine.
But do NOT blame the patterned, universal failings of that car on the owners. That car, and Fiats also, like Renaults, were all garbage.
There is a great deal of “revisionist” history when it comes to cars. Most of the cars that are “awesome” from the past aren’t nearly as good as people remember.
I don’t think I’m talking about revisionist history- my experiences with a Yugo are present, having just come back from the shops in it today. However, mine is a ’92, and certainly many parts are better than on earlier models. CV joints are actually more robust than the earlier Fiat units. Also, it was unfortunate that Bricklin chose the 128 engines to import to the US- the older style OHV engine is nearly unbreakable. Yes there were bad Yugos that rolled down the assembly line- just as there were bad B bodies, Panthers (’82-85 in particular), and dare I say even bad Volvo 240’s (76-77). These have all died, and the ones left are the good ones. I think this is why people like me can drive a good example of a ‘bad’ car and have good luck with it.
However, there is also quite a bit of red-baiting that goes along with Eastern European cars, which (having owned all of them at one point or another) are certainly no worse than what came out of European factories in the ’80s. At the pub a few months ago, I remember a Rover SD1 owner spewing vitriol about how crap Ladas were. He had just had his gearbox rebuilt on a 40K mile show car.
“However, there is also quite a bit of red-baiting that goes along with Eastern European cars, which (having owned all of them at one point or another)…”
That’s what I thought, too – BEFORE I bought my Yugo.
Now…look again at my partial summary of problems encountered, to the car’s destruction. Any of that involve “Red-baiting” or politics?
The car, as seen in America, was crap. CRAP! Now, you seem to be claiming that better examples were sold elsewhere – and I can’t argue that. But if so, it was monumentally STUPID…the Volkswagen basically built up West Germany after the war. Had Zastava had the ability, they could have done the same thing with a dirt-cheap and well-built Yugo.
@Brian: Sounds like you’re over in Europe? UK? somewhere. I had two Yugos myself back in the 1990’s, both used cars. The red one was fairly well maintained, I bought the car for $1000 US in 1991, basically drove the car for free for two years. I was hit from behind (by a Ford Festiva nee Kia Pride or Mazda 121), and the car was totaled due to the relative worth of the car. I found the car easy to maintain (with factory supplied tool kit, something I only ever used to see on German cars), excellent on fuel consumption, great seating position and excellent headlights, something I remember as I write this on a beautiful Michigan harvest moon evening… The car had decent handling on it’s skinny little tires. The car was so worthless, the normally notorious theives in downtown Atlanta (where I lived at the time) left the car alone.
The second one was abused/neglected a fair amount, but I’m pretty handy with a screwdriver and managed to correct all of it’s issues. With the exception of a bad clutch cable and some inner CV joints, the car gave good service. I kept the car for three years and then sold it to a friend of my BIL’s, he drove the car for another two years before wrecking it.
Unlike others, I managed to keep both cars on the road with very little effort. I was lucky to live fairly close to Bayless Motors in Atlanta, they have all the Fiat parts you’d ever want. Additionally, for the stuff I couldn’t do in my driveway (which wasn’t much)(my BIL was a line mechanic at the time, we had access to his lift, garage and toolbox) I lived near a well respected foreign car garage that was reasonably priced (as I do now, BTW).
When I moved back to the midwest in the late 90’s, there were a few Yugos around, but rust was working on them, and I haven’t seen any on the roads (or anywhere else) in several years now. I would love to have another one, a later one in particular, as they had the fuel injection and other upgrades.
In the Denver area, there is a company that specialized in Fiats called Apple Motors. They used to offer engine swaps, using the 1.5L X/1-9 drivetrain and other goodies. I would love to have an uprated Yugo, just for the entertainment value alone.
I’m late to the party I know but my pick for a low cost DD for 30 years would be a 67 – 69 Type 1 Beetle with the 1500cc single port engine. However, (back on topic) my uncle had a Fiat 128 Spider ‘vert that he drove for the 20 years in which I knew him.
Maintenance is the key to making anything survive long term but choosing something with a known longevity habit helps This is why I bought a XU9 PSA diesel with proper maintenance they are known to do 500k kms between rebuilds just regular oil & filter changes and a belt change every 100k kms sees these engines rack up huge milages.
Mine has approx 250k on it now so is at half life it uses no oil and gets 5L/100kms on the highway not too bad for a 13 year old car.
No “He’s a brava man than I.” jokes?
“The reality is anything can be kept going, with the right attitude, maintenance and getting to know your car’s strengths and weaknesses.” Quote
That might be true in Southern California, but where I live the Fiat 131/Mirafiori ( never heard it called a Brava before) didn’t last much beyond ten years, thanks to tinworm. I had forgotten it ever existed,it is so long since I saw one.
As I recall, FIAT used a GM automatic in Yurp; maybe THM200 or something similar. It was used in Opels & Vauxhalls & such.
Interesting and good to know. Wikipedia doesn’t even tell you enough about the car to even say what transmissions were available. I had to go there to figure out it was RWD. Growing up in the midwest I’ve NEVER seen one of these in the flesh.
Called a trimatic over here or traumatic depending on experience
Wasn’t the Trimatic a TH180?
Back in the early 80s, I got invited to the Chicago Auto Show with a friend. He was going as part of a small group of co-workers, and we were going in two cars. The drivers were two brothers, each with a Fiat. One was Brava like this one, and the other was a Strada.
I was in the Strada. It was my first time in a Fiat. Not bad cars, really. They seemed no worse than the Rabbits that were becoming common then. I came away thinking that Fiat must really be getting some traction in the US. Then they were gone.
Imagine how far the guy could go if he were as fanatical about a 71 Duster.
Good for him, but I still stand by my choices of Bonneville Brougham Coupe and 242DL. That Brava does have a nice no-nonsense look to it though.
I’ve not seen one around here (Pacific NW) in over 20 years, probably more like 25 years or so but they used to exist up this way, then again, tin worm isn’t our nemesis here like in the Midwest or NE where salt is often used during the winters.
I’ve always known they were rear wheel drive and a C segment, or small family car.
This car is known as the 131, 131 Mirafiori except in the US where it was simply the 131, then the Brava/Super Brava (the Super Brava having FI in the late 70’s).
I have to agree, quite handsome cars for their times.
As vintage Fiats go, I’d have a 128 Familiar (3 door wagon) or get a Fiat based Yugo.
Back in the day Fiat made some good performing sedans the 125 & Kiwi 125T race version were well respected and popular in fact the 125T was the only thing that could beat a Vauxhall Victor 3.3 on a track especially in the wet which was huge kudos. Most however have gone due to tinworm even the NZ assembled cars rusted like mad. One of the selling points of the Lada was it T34 like build it may look like a Fiat but they dont rust as quick, or go as quick.
“regular oil changes, routine mechanics visits and smooth, moderately-paced driving”
Most any car will have a long life if this is done. I come from a family that keeps cars for a long time (10-14 years) and rarely has problems with them due to this.
There was a ’56 Chevy fanatic who lived in my area…had at least one of them, a pristine restored car. His daily drivers were a 1973 Dart 4-door in the ugliest brown and yellow color combination I’ve ever seen and a red short box Dodge pickup of about the same vintage. I suspect he bought them new and kept them up so that he’d never have to spend money on another driver, because I never saw either one with a speck of dirt on it, or looking as though it hadn’t been waxed that morning. I’d suspect that he was just as fanatical about the mechanical upkeep. I was still seeing them regularly ten years ago before I retired.
I’ve seen this car and owner before, maybe on TTAC? Regardless, it is a remarkable story, since very few regularly owned and driven cars seem to exceed much over 200K miles. I have a 1997 Chevy Cavalier that has 251K miles on it. I generally like the car, I mostly commute in it, but I maintain it as if it were needed to go on long trips. It could do it.
I think most people get rid of cars after a certain period of time, depending upon the person. Their needs change, their money situation changes, car gets totaled stuff like that. I’ve had a couple of cars lost to accidents myself.
This guy chose a car that suited his needs and took care of it accordingly. We should all do the same with what we possess.
I don’t know how it went elsewhere, but in Italy the build quality of cars, Fiat, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, suffered a lot in the ’80s and ’90s because of political reasons. A long period of fierce union fights, with intermittent strikes took place, and that reflected visibly on the cars you’d drive every day. Fiat engines have always been strong and durable, bodies much less, but keep in mind that in Italy (even in the north) salt was never used on roads until a couple of decades ago, apart from motorways in extreme frozen conditions, so cars tended to last longer. As for eastern Countries, I remember visiting a Fiat plant in Togliattigrad (URSS) back then and the average worker would appear to me as being less then motivated and willing to do. To me, it’s all down to politics and social conditions.