1975-1978 Fiat 131 Familiare

We got this one! Yay...?

Free turtlenecks for the entire family came with the car.

Clean lines...something that's had to find in today's cars.

The year was 1975 and emissions was choking the life out of our cars. One answer was to by a lightweight vehicle and the foreign carmakers had plenty to offer. In Fiat showrooms, a shiny new Spanish-built 131 station wagon was waiting for you to take it for a test spin. The five-speed manual transmission was a revelation if all you'd ever driven were 2-, 3- and 4-speed American automatics. There was an optional GM-sourced 3-speed slushbox offered too, but you'd have to have been nuts to want it.

Initially, the sole engine was a hand-me-down from the 124; the 1.8-liter, 86 hp and 90 foot-pound (SAE), two-carb four. Nothing changed for the entire run, which ended in 1978. Oddly, weight did change; in 1975, it was 2510 pounds, but it ended up being 2425 in 1978. Weird. Maybe the metal they used got thinner and thinner? Heh.

MSRP in 1975 was $4420 and $5048 in the final year. By comparison, a 1978 Datsun 810 wagon was $6538 and it weighed 2757 pounds.

It's been a loooooong time since I've driven one of these, but from my admittedly hazy recollection the 131 wasn't a step forward after the 124; it had sloppier handling and the build quality suffered in comparison. But compared to many of the similar British offerings (Euro Escort, etc.), this was a great, much more fun, alternative. Braking was decent and the horsepower was acceptable if you drove it like you stole it, which is exactly the way you should drive just about any Italian car.

I'm sorry, but television commercials don't get any cooler than this; great music, a uber-masculine narrator, you can actually see the cars (even though it's dark) and they're not busy pulling such stupid stunts that it distracts from the subject of what they're actually trying to sell.