Ah, the Ritmo/Strada. That was a car for the individual who felt they really wanted a VW Rabbit, but weren't too comfortable with the whole reliability or ergonomics issues at the time.

I am shocked that this car is not made entirely out of rust by this time.

There was a UK ad for that car, calling it "the car built by robots".

"...and hated by people" was CAR's inevitable response. They were common in Ohio. Stradas and Bravas both. We had an active Fiat dealer and a boundless supply of Midwestern optimism.

Is the reason the Scout is parked so close is to hide the tags? It's a Fiat ... I can't see this thing running well enough to ever pass CA smog!

Glad you didn't drop the camera, instead getting a handle on things.
Yep, I thought the Strada/Ritmo was overall kinda neat lookin' in 1981. This one? eesh. Modded as a drag racer? What's under the hood?

Like you, I've never seen one in the flesh, but I'm pretty sure I have a toy version. Nice find!!

I remember seeing the super-celebratory TV commercials for the "all new" Strada when it was introduced. I remember wondering at the time if Fiat had finally produced a worthy car. The answer to that question came soon enough.

In this age of aero everything, I do miss round headlights, though.

And I especially dig the DIY FWD "reverse big-and-littles."

I wonder if this thing even has an engine, the front looks a little light. I guess if there's an oil slick under it that would answer that question. I like the contoured front plate.

My parents bought one new in 1980. Orange of course. When it was still new, dad took it to a local Autocross and took the class win. After the parents divorced, mom got the Strada and she drove it all over the country. It finally completely ate itself on its way back from Ogden, Utah sometime in the mid-nineties. Mom loved that car. She replaced it with a Dodge Colt (with the dual-range 4-speed) too bad it wasn't a turbo.

Of course my family hasn't been known to own "normal" cars. Growing up with a 63 Elan then a Bugeye Sprite, a MGB GT, Ford Capri, various Shelby-Dodges, etc can skew your thinking a little. My garage is a bit of a hodge-podge of vehicles right now: A turbo caravan, my turbo Sundance, 87 CSX, 80 X-1/9 and 79 924 GTS replica. Of course if any of those cars ran, then I'd be a happier man.

Scout says, "Mmmmm International Food"
OM NOM NOM NOM "Me like Italian" OM NOM NOM NOM

I had a Fiat but I eated it!!!1!!1!!1!!URP1!!!!!!1!1!!1!!

I like the Matador coupe-inspired grille.

The first family sedan I remember was a FIAT. My dad bought it used from a "Friend". I strap-towing it home from the "friend's" house behind our 70's dodge conversion van.

Neither the car, nor the van, lasted that long.

Ultra rare these days. I love the look from behind of the Ritmo. I have seen them recently in southern Yurup but up here in Scandinavia the winter ate them with a pinch of salt. Great find!

Great find! What a unique car - didn't realize they even attempted to sell them over here.

Looking at both of these is like watching a real-life reenactment of Cars.

One Eyed Door Handle Is Happy To See You.

The Strada...the road. We need to have a Strada/El Camino PCH! For the record, Ritmo is way too close to Gitmo.

This is the sort of car you hear a starving agoraphobic 33-year-old artist lament about on national public radio: "I was having a difficult time relating to my father. The last thing I wanted to do was have him insist on helping me buy a new a car after my Fiat Strada wouldn't start again. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't get rid of it. Maybe he was afraid I'd never leave the house. It wasn't that I didn't want to leave, I was just having a hard time figuring things out."

If you think I'm exaggerating, I did actually hear a clip like this on "This American Life"

@ViergangFuchs: This was the famous UK commercial for the Strada from 1979, emphasising that no Italians are involved in the assembly of your Fiat. Anywhere. Honest.

+ Watch video

Meanwhile, at British Leyland, things were a bit different.

+ Watch video

Wow. Incredible find. I probably haven't seen one of these in the last 25 years. I thought they were way cool back when they were new. Of course, 10 year old kids don't care about things like reliability.

This was one of the first cars I remember that kept its spare tire under the hood in the engine compartment.

Very strange cars, but when I was in college, occasionally you would find one in the free classified papers for 3 figures. Sadly, that was 20+ years ago, too.

The sight of the front wheels astonishes me; I gave up ayears ago trying to find any sort of non-stock wheels with a 4x98mm bolt circle, much less a set of slotted mags. In fact, I'm prepping and painting a set of Strada wheels with the sunburst pttern as part of my Haflinger project. I believe Maserati's Biturbo was the last time anyone saw that oddball bolt pattern used on a US-market automobile.

I have a foggy memory of taking a day trip in one of these as a kid. I'm not sure why we were in it, as I know we didn't own it. I remember going on the ferry, and thinking the covered hatch area with the split fold-down seat made a great place to play (what seatbelts?). I remember those door handles too. We did have an X1/9 and a Lancia Beta Coupe, so I know my dad wasn't a stranger to the hell of Italian car ownership. Maybe it was a test drive. I'm glad to see this here, I was beginning to think I had made the whole thing up.

I think I saw the exact same one for sale on craigslist a month or so ago. I own two running fiats from the same era; a 1981 124 spider and a 1982 X1/9 the 124 being a fairly reliable daily driver.

If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Bean lost his torque wrench.

Rare to find one in the US, heck it is even rare to sight one in Italy!
The euro version looked much better though, without those bumpers and all.
Designed by Bertone!

The sporty version was the Ritmo Abarth 125 TC, there was also a cabrio version:

and in Spain it was sold as the Seat Ronda.

@al_beaton: Ah, "Hand Built By Roberts". I immediately went looking for that Not The Nine O'Clock News clip but you beat me to it :)

The Strada was pretty God-awful, but the engines were quite good. I had an X1/9 when I was 18 and investigated putting the Strada Abarth 130TC engine in it (one of my friends had done something similar, albeit with a truly disgusting bodykit as well). Alas, the amount of re-engineering of the cooling system (already flaky as standard) to cope with the whopping 130bhp of that DOHC behemoth was too much of a challenge, so I left it as standard and flogged it to a (no word of a lie) blonde hairdresser.

...I would use them to open my heart.

I had a red 2 door 1981 Strada, and I liked the car. It was fast and handled pretty good. I really didn't have any mechanical problems with it, although the clock went out, and they put the new one in and wired it backwards, so when you turned the headlights on, the clock went blank. Apparently a lot of the parts were interchangable with the X-1/9. It would run rings around comparable American made cars such as the Chevette, which actually had a larger engine.

"So... what are you doing in Italy?" the Matador asked the little Plymouth. "Oh.. broadening my Horizon, I guess." She said it with a knowing giggle. He smiled and glanced at her tailpipe. "I think I can help," he said...

ahhh, the strada - the second car i ever owned.

as a senior in high school, october of 1984, my stepfather cam home one day with the joyous news - he had found a great little economy car, a 79 (maybe a 78, I can't remember now) Strada, royal blue with grey cloth interior, for sale at work, and as i was having difficulty on my part itme job money affording the 79 cents a gallon my '73 impala was sucking with impunity, i thought this was great - a real live eye-talian car, great styling, decent mileage, cool as hell door handles....

... and i bought it for 200 bucks, with unknown miles (broken odo), a rusty ( OK, rusted through) hood, and no radio or air. and you know what? this 17 year old kid drove the living fuck out of tht car for almost two years without a single repair beyond the regular flat tire repairs. not a single problem, not one at all ZERO! I didn't even change the oil for those two years, and no mechanical troubles at all. sure, 3 of the 4 window cranks, and all 4 of the inside door handles, broke within a few weeks of each other (craptacular italian plastics). and who ever came up with the idea of putting the spare tire on top of the engine,where the heat destroyed the new Pirelli P3 spare I bought? did i mention the gear shift lever (my first stick shift car...) that would fall straight down through the floor almost every other shift, cause the plastic joint holding it in was half melted? then one day, the catalytic converter went bad. just fell of the car, and off i drove. so what did i do, but find a local shop that put on a glass pak for me - the blue bomber became a friggin street rod, faster than any first gen GTI and ohhh, that sound....

sold the car for 50 bucks more than I paid for it after two years of ownership. perhaps the best. car. ever.

oh, and it got better mileage than my current mid-nineties BMW 530i does.

@ViergangFuchs: I agree, these things were all over northern Ohio and I thought they were very cool. It was nothing for the dealers to have new leftovers for two model years. They would sit on dealers' lots, rusting away with their window stickers still attached.

lol, ive been seeing this car in Alameda for years now.
Dont forget about that Yugo that also lives in our town!!
...or the renault wagon with Team Kermitt Stickers.

@slantsick: My first thought was "anorexic Pacer".

@Mike the Dog: Yup. You win.

Strada X?

My, how big panel gaps you have!

@freeride53: There's a Yugo? Where?

Yikes. That's even good by Alameda standards.

I always had a fascination with the Ritmo door handles, too. You don't often see these on the road, but they do still race every year on the August bank holiday in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, usually partaking in the Punto/Uno class. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have photos somewhere... I'll get back to you on that one!

My first car was a dark blue Strada. Good luck finding those door handles since mine broke off and were replaced from the junk yard.

I shuddered a couple of years later when I saw the Yugo and refelcted how much it looked like my unreliable Strada but sold for about $3k less than what mine supposedly did new.

My parents bought one new in 1982, left over on the lot just before Fiat left this market, and eventually shipped it back to Europe for use as a vacation car. The electrics, quality of the interior and overall assembly were pretty awful, but we never had any mechanical problems. The engines in these cars were greatly underrated. Not very powerful, since it was only an 8V 1.5, but it was a fuel injected SOHC with hemi combustion chambers, and they were very smooth, loved to rev and made a nice sound, in a typically Italian manner. The Fiat 128 it replaced was so much better put together and reliable. We had it for ever, and it wouldn't die. I believe the Strada was the last straw for Fiat in this market. Contrary to the stereotypes, they were actually pretty good cars until the late seventies, then it all went downhill.

My bad. The cars I have photos of are the Uno's predecessor, the Fiat 127. Which is still cool in a heap-o-junk kinda way so I'm posting the photos anyway. There used to be a Fiat Ritmo class at the Phonenix Park, however.

I'm posting the links as I don't want to ruin the webpage:
Fiat 127
Fiat 127... again

And while on my travels I discovered something else which might interest those following Jalopnik's exploits in the 24 Hours of LeMons. What is that dicing with a Lotus Europa? Why... it's a Volvo 200 series. I'm not sure if it's a 242 or a 240GT. And here it is again. This is a model which, to the best of my knowledge, never made it to this part of Europe. Hence it being a left-hand-drive. But at least now you know it's possible to get one up-and-running!

My bad again. It appears to be a 140, but I can't be sure.

Can you walk a little faster, said the Strada to the Snail;
There's a Scout close behind us
And he's treading on my tail.

apologies to Lewis Carroll.

My mom bought her 1975 Audi Fox Sportwagon from Mossner Motors Porsche+Audi/FIAT in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Whenever we took the Fox in for service, I'd check out the Porsche 924s and 928s (remember the op-art checkerboard-pattern-on-peyote cloth seats in those??) and I'd ooh/aah over the new Audi 5000S in the showroom. I remember well the nifty FIAT X 1/9's, sleek 124 spiders (and later Pininfarina spiders), fancy Bravas ('the $5,000 car with the $8,000 interior'), 128 sedans and Sport Coupes, and later on, these Stradas arrived. As an 11-year-old kid, I liked the pictures of the Ritmo in Europe with their futuristic-looking assymmetrical grille slots, but I thought the Strada lost something in translation. I do recall that the interiors of Stradas were 100% color-coordinated, meaning everything from steering wheel to shift-boot was rendered in identical hues of grey, pumpkin, or the most appalling sky-blue you could ever imagine. It makes my skin crawl to think about it! I haven't seen a Strada (or an Audi Fox) for more than 15 years...the Midwest winters were cruel (or merciful- your choice), and these cars are long-dead history.

I have been saving brochures from the Chicago Auto Show every year since I was a kid, however, and I still have glossy brochures of all the above-mentioned cars in their original, rust-free glory. It's fun to look at the brochures today and think about how these cars fared in the marketplace...

Haven't seen any of those here in Germany since years. They probably rusted away years ago...

@brandegee: Admit it, you write copy for This American Life. Of course, your real name needs to be something 100% pussified, say "Graham C. Chutney."

You can build on This American Life's fine tradition of promoting the most liberal views possible, while at the same time claiming no bias by playing the most insulting, retarded conservatives that could be found to speak into a microphone, or at least surreptitiously recorded at some kind of ridiculous rally.

You wacky agoraphobe, you.

my friend had one in high school. much more fun - and cheaper - than the rabbits (er golfs) of that era. my experience growing up with fiats (my dad had a '74 & a '79 124 spyder):
1) ziebart them or they will rust in the blink of an eye.
2) never ever run the engine over the recommended temperature even for a minute.
3) have fun out maneuvering just about anything else that sold for less than $10k new in the '70's.
4) when you regain your senses trade the fiat in towards something swedish.

I owned one of these. A Strada 65L. Three door in mid blue. Not bad for a 17 year old, and cost me £500 too. BUT. What a pile of shit it was! It handled badly, broke down all the time, was on its 3rd set of sills, and 3rd gearbox. All the seats collapsed, and had a MAJOR electrical fault with its printed Circuit board fuse box that meant we almost hardwired the damn thing!
But styling wise? 'king brilliant!

The non-matching rims are brilliant! Love the grille, too. I've got half a mind to track one of those down and mount the front end on my wall as a giant lamp.

When my Dad's '71 Super Beetle died in '81, he was looking for a new car.

There was also Fiat dealer about a mile down the road right over the border in MA (from RI). I actually liked them, they had character. I always though my Dad should have either a VW Rabbit or a Strada. Both would have probably lasted longer than '81 Chevy Chevette Scooter he did buy.

Why does everybody bust on the Strada? Forbes named it one of the 10 worst cars of all time. Mine got 44 mpg with a tail wind, and hauled all my junk to and from college (300 miles one way) for four years without a hitch. Sure, it was cheap transportation. The only problem was the fuel pump that was mechanical and bolted to the top of the engine (poor design - no pump head). Even when it started to fail, it didn't leave you stranded. Five bolts, 10 minutes and 20 bucks got your meager engine performance back for another 6 months. By the way, that was an Abarth engine with a Fiat head. Try to find anything today with 4 wheels that will give you 44 mpg highway without a battery pack. I wish I had mine today - I would be driving the crap out of it to work and back.