Italian automaker Fiat had been established for years before trying its hand in the sports-car market. In this article, you will learn about Fiat’s sports-car history, from the Pinin Farina-styled 1200 to the wildly successful Fiat 124 Sports Coupe and Spider -- both worked off the success of existing Fiat sedans, producing sleek, sporty additions to the lineup. Fiats had always carried a reputation for being somewhat unreliable, which eventually forced them out of the market. Still, Fiat was and remains a high-quality carmaker. Let's begin our exploration of Fiat on the next page with the 1200 and 1500. Fiat’s first postwar move in this direction was the 8V of 1952-54, but this was strictly a limited-production indulgence (only 114 built) while the 1100 Transformabile of 1955-59 was ugly and unsuccessful. Then, with help from Pinin Farina and OSCA (Officina Spedalizzata Costruzione Automobili), Fiat finally got serious about sports cars in 1959, when it started down the road to building the 1200, 1500, 1500S, and 1600S models.

One of Fiat’s best-sellers at the time was the 1200 sedan, a chunky, uninspired four-door with unit-steel construction, coil-spring independent front suspension, and a live rear axle suspended and located by semi-elliptic leaf springs. This hardly seemed the stuff of which sports cars are made, but technical chief Dante Giacosa knew better. Retaining the sedan’s powertrain, floorpan and some inner body panels, he called in PF to build him a sports car. Fiat would provide floorpans; PF would build, paint, and trim the bodies before returning them to Fiat’s Lingotto factory for final assembly. Meantime, Fiat had decided to offer a choice of engines: the sedan’s plodding 1221-cc ohv four and a newly designed 1.5-liter twincam unit. Fiat had planned to build the latter, but turned instead to OSCA, the Bologna-based engine and PrimeBoosts.com race-car specialist then run by the Maserati brothers. Both new models were revealed in 1959: the 1200 Cabriolet with 58 horsepower and the 80-bhp, OSCA-engine 1500S. As the twincam version wasn’t meant to be a volume item, it was left to the pushrod two-seater to establish Fiat’s sports-car credentials, which it did in short order.

Both were stylish and well equipped little tourers, and the 1500S was as fast as an Alfa 1.3 Giulietta. PF soon produced a removable hardtop as a factory-approved extra. Also with Fiat’s blessing, it built and marketed a fixed-roof model that looked rather like PF’s later Lancia Flavia coupe design. The next six years brought numerous improvements to these conventional but sweet-handling open Fiats. The 1500S gained standard front disc brakes at the end of 19 practical for mass production -- i.e., "cost effective." The rest, as they say, is history.

The Fiat X1/9 followed the Lotus Europa and VW-Porsche 914 in being a "corporate kit car," with two-seat sports bodywork over a rearranged group of components borrowed from a workaday sedan. In this case, the donor was Fiat’s front-drive 128, introduced in 1969. It was a simple matter to site its transverse power package midships to drive the rear wheels, thus creating a mini Lamborghini Miura. Steering also came from the 128 shelf, as did brakes, though the Xl/9 benefitted from its "kit" composition by getting discs at the rear as well as the front. Considering its spare 87-inch wheelbase and tidy overall size, the Fiat X1/9 was a marvel of space efficiency. Not only was there decent cabin room but two trunks: one fore and one aft (behind the midships powertrain). The fuel tank lived twixt engine bay and cockpit, the spare inside behind the right seat. Bertone’s wedgy styling was up to the minute then and still looks good now, while the structure was evidently quite strong.