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| It's a 1968 Fiat 1100T in remarkably good condition inside and out. Knowing how Fiats of this era succumbed to the dreaded tin-worm with monotonous regularity, it's great to see one still on the road and obviously well cared for. The 1100T was produced as a van and a pick-up from 1957 right through to end of production in 1971. Although labelled 1100, only the first models had 1100cc motors. Larger motors were introduced at various stages during production. I think they only came to New Zealand for a few years around the time the above vehicle was produced, and as far as I can recall, only as vans.This example is listed as being 1300cc. |
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Fiat 1100T
I have seen this van a few times in the Greytown area, but this is the first time I have managed to snap it.
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Kudos to the owner of this FIAT but I am really not sure why anyone would bother to save one let alone restore it.
I worked at a FIAT dealer in Southland, NZ when these were new and does anybody remember the old expression; "It wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding" ?? I think it was invented by one of the drivers for Gilbarco, (the petrol pump maintenance people)who were forced to drive these well and truly overloaded with tools and equipment. Truly an awful experience as they were bad enough to drive when empty. I used to think these drivers sabotaged the FIATs just so they could get out of work by bringing them into the dealership service department for a few hours each (and every!)week for repairs but, no, that was the very nature of The Beast -- as others called these vans.
The new ones would be transported to the dealership and then have to undergo a pre-delivery inspection before they were sold. This mostly involved tightening and adjusting all the stuff that should have been done before the van left the assembly plant.
Quite a number of the vans we sold came back for steering "wandering" issues on the road that we couldn't seem to correct. It was during one of the many wheel alignment sessions that we accidentally discovered that the steering columns were very poorly aligned with the attachment flange down at the steering box and that the assembly line workers had simply used a large lever of some sort to "jack" the column over about 3 (yes, three) inches so it would mate with the mounting holding the top portion of the column at the dash panel area. I'm assuming that this van had its "fix" for this years ago otherwise the column/shaft would have fractured by now -- as indeed some of ours did in service! Good luck with finding parts.
RB
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