Jordan Schlansky, an associate producer for Conan, might be best known for asking Harrison Ford how many grips would be on the lightsaber in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But his erudite humor is also well-suited to cars, like this 1962 Fiat 500, which he and Conan O’Brien recently took on a road trip through Tuscany.
Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need to know.
I understand that one of the Fiat 124 Spider Abarth/Fiat 124 Spider/Miata’s greatest draws is the ease at which you can put its top up or down, as it is only powered by your arm. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking that the new Abarth 124 GT, with a removable carbon fiber hardtop, is utterly righteous. …
I love the Fiat 126 in a way that I can’t quite explain. Luckily, I have this excellent video to help me with it, wherein one 126 owner decides to show off his car to his skeptical buddy and breaks down twice before even making it onto the highway.
As the name sort of suggests, idiot lights aren’t the sort of thing that gets much respect in the automotiverse. This is understandable; most idiot lights are scattered across a given instrument cluster with the casual abandon of weeds. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and the 1984 Fiat Ritmo Cabrio Bertone shows…
If you have a hankering for a Fiat 500 with the 1.4-liter naturally aspirated engine, you’d best act fast. Natural aspiration is soon going to be a thing of the past once the 2018 Fiat 500s start hitting the dealerships.
Before Fiat married Chrysler it was just Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, but most people probably would have told you it stood for this: “Fix It Again, Tony.” My dad took this as a personal challenge and adopted a 1979 Spider 2000 in the ’90s. The car’s still in the family. Actually, it practically raised me.
Over the weekend the International Committee of the Red Cross tweeted a video of three MAN KAT 1 cargo trucks slogging through a “road” that looks more like a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The trucks are towing each other, and seem to be moving under their own power at the same time.
There’s two groups of people who I think know more about cars than nearly any other: the people who work at the Lane Motor Museum and the collective, moist hive mind that is the Jalopnik readership. Incredibly, one of these groups has found something that’s stumping it, and I’m hoping the other group can help. I think…
One of the things I’ve learned about myself over my life is that I’m much more interested in cheap crap than nice things. I’m not sure if it stems from some deep-seated inferiority complex or what, but I’m generally more impressed by things made with severe restrictions than unlimited budgets. Maybe that’s why I’m so…
It’s August in New York City. The streets smell like trash and pee, condensation drips from window-mounted air-conditioning units and hoards of children in fluorescent summer camp t-shirts press uncomfortably close. These are all things driving a 2017 Abarth 124 Spider makes you painfully aware of because—as long as…
Have you ever dreamed of cruising under the Tuscan sun, top down on your convertible, with all of your troubles and worries dissipating in the wind? Well, we can’t exactly do that for you, but we can provide you with some relaxing photos of it.
Divorces are unpleasant, messy things, something that seems true for both people and car companies. When Fiat and Spanish carmaker SEAT parted ways back in 1983, it got messy. One of the results of that messiness is the car you see above, one of the rare cars that became an important part of a legal battle. There’s a…
I drive a Subaru Forester. You can put two babies in it. No one has ever remarked on it other than to point out they have the exact same boring, perfectly reasonable vehicle. It was a surprise, then, when people were excited to see me in a Fiat 500X.
Actor Tom Hanks posed for photos next to some old tiny cars while filming in Hungary, tweeted them, and now some Polish people are trying to ship him a car.
