Fail of the century #37: Fiat 124 Spider

Picture the scene. A two-seat, rear-drive Italian roadster on a sinuous Amalfi coast road. Roof down, Champions League theme on the stereo, bowl of piping spaghetti alla vongole in your lap. What could be finer?

In the case of the Fiat 124 Spider, quite a lot. There’s nothing like a truly great Italian sports car, and the 124 Spider was indeed nothing like a truly great Italian sports car.

The fact it was based (heavily, heavily based) on the lovely Mazda MX-5 wasn’t really the issue, even if Fiat should have tried a bit harder than simply Ctrl+C/Ctrl+Ving the MX-5’s interior wholesale. After all, Italy has a grand history of taking a tried-and-tested donor car and... Italianifying it with prettier bodywork, rortier engines and sharper handling.

But Fiat didn’t take the MX-5 and make it prettier, rortier and sharper. Instead, it gave it lumpier bodywork, wheezier turbo engines, slightly soggier handling, and a heftier price tag. The fruitier Abarth version did a little for the 124’s driving manners, but nothing for the heavy chinned looks. Or indeed the price tag.

In four years on sale in the UK, Fiat sold about 3,000 124 Spiders, with the Abarth version adding – when rounded to the nearest hundred sales – ‘basically none’. In the same period, Mazda shifted five times as many MX-5s. You can keep your spaghetti alla vongole, Fiat, because Britain’s having ramen.