Rusty But Trusty

Always wanted a Jeep or Bronco, or perhaps a Fiat 500X, but couldn’t stomach the crude design or the lack of a convertible top? Well, your solution is here. Someone took an unsuspecting little Fiat spider, gutted it, and plopped it on top of a 4×4 chassis. And it wasn’t the usual platform from a Suzuki Samurai, often used for lifting small cars, but a big-boy chassis from a Nissan Pathfinder, with a V6 no less. And unlike the above 4x4s, you needn’t give up Pininfarina’s styling for off-road ability. Check out this 1977 Fiat 124 Spider for sale for $4000 in Dewey, AZ.

Often, these 4×4 conversions get stuck with tacky paint jobs or gaudy interior accessories from the local chain auto parts store. But in this case, you have an understated grey paint job over tan cloth interior and alloy wheels that you can’t call understated (because they’re big), but not bad considering the competition. They also often lose their manual transmissions for an automatic, but in this case, you still get a five-speed manual, though it’s probably not as sweet to shift as the original Fiat unit.

It looks like the person who did this conversion cut the front of the car so the whole clip folds forward, improving access over the original car. The attachment of the car to the chassis looks a little crude, so inspect carefully and make sure everything functions properly. The builder seems to have stuck with all the platform pieces from the donor car, right up to the dashboard, so functionality may not be as compromised as you’d expect.

While the classic original Fiat dash is gone (boo!), the car retains its Fiat seats, done in 1980s-conversion-van brown cloth upholstery. The Fiat even retains its original rear seat, top, and rear bumper. Since we’ve given up on sports car handling, it would be fun to fit some more utilitarian and period-looking wheels, and maybe find a way to clean up the area between the Fiat body and Nissan chassis. If you’ve ever wanted to be scoffed at at an Italian car show, this might be your only opportunity.

Tags: 124, 4x4, Feature, Fiat, italian, spider, sports car, suv

This entry was posted on February 17, 2016 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.