Spotted: Where style goes to die - the half-vinyl roof

Reader Alain Raymond is a serious fan of vintage Fiats. He sent along a nice collection of photos after reading a column I wrote about my first car – a 1967 Fiat 600. But Alain’s cars are a lot nicer than mine was. The one in the foreground is an Abarth 1000 TC, the Porsche Turbo of vintage Fiats. (My car had 28 horsepower, the 1000TC has 112, and will do 190 km/h.)

This is Alain’s 1968 Abarth 595 SS. Abarth is a legendary tuning company that turned base-model Fiats into performance machines. Note the flared fenders, bullet mirrors and scorpion logo (all coveted by stock Fiat owners like myself.)

The Fiat 500’s motor had just two cylinders. It looks a lot more impressive when you bolt on a pair of Weber 40 DCOE carburetors with velocity stacks, as Abarth did with the 595 SS. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s, Weber carburetors were lust-worthy mechanical status symbols that young enthusiasts would sell their soul for (I bolted a set on one of my Volkswagen Beetles.)

Aside from the engineers who build them, few people understand the complex components beneath the skin of a modern car. A peek under the front lid of the Fiat 595 SS shows how simple things used to be. The black metal object in the middle is the gas tank, which sat directly above the drivers’ legs. This made front end collisions a bad idea.

The 595 SS cockpit shows the unadorned elegance of Fiat in the 1960’s. Nothing beats the functional beauty of a painted metal dash with simple instrumentation and toggle switches.

Back in the sixties, a lot of Fiat 500’s didn’t have seatbelts. Alain’s 595 SS has full racing harnesses, which would at least give you a fighting chance in a crash.

(If you’d like to know what it’s like to drive a vintage 500 with no safety gear, here’s a column I wrote that describes the feeling.

You may or may not remember the vinyl roof, a regrettable automotive style that flourished back in the day. The only thing worse than a vinyl roof is a half-vinyl roof, like this one, which makes your car look like it has succumbed to the automotive version of male pattern baldness. I spotted this one in small-town Pennsylvania last weekend.

Fixing a car after a front-end impact calls for specialized tools and skilled craftsmanship. Or you could just buy a ratcheting hold-down strap at Home Depot and call it a day. I spotted this repair job in upstate New York.

The period that followed World War 2 was a significant one for the car industry, and for hot rodders who loved modifying Detroit’s products. One enduring theme is the sleek, missile-inspired machine. I spotted this low-slung sled in New York State. And if you get a ride, watch your legs on the way out – those side-slung exhaust pipes are hot!

On my way through Appalachia last weekend, I chanced upon the sales lot of Thunder Chicken Motors, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Among the offerings was this Pontiac Fiero GT. The Fiero is the only mid-engine sports car ever produced by a Detroit manufacturer, and its reign was brief – it was introduced in 1984, and went off the market in 1988. The one on the Thunder Chicken lot is a rare six-cylinder model (the vast majority of Fiero’s were powered by a 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine known as “The Iron Duke.)

Also on the Thunder Chicken lot was this 1939 Oldsmobile hot rod. My favorite part of this car is the Moon hubcaps. Made from spin aluminum, this kind of hubcap was pioneered by speed-record competitors on the Bonneville Salt Flats back in the 1940’s. By smoothing the airflow over the wheel, these hubcaps reduced drag and let a car go faster. The design was later popularized by Dean Moon, hot rodder and founder of Moon Speed Equipment. Although they worked beautifully on Salt Flats speed runs, Moon hubcaps aren’t ideal for street-driven machines, because the closed design limits the flow of cooling air to the brakes.