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The Fiat 130 Coupe: An Affordable 1970s Italian GT Car

When it was released in 1971 the Fiat 130 Coupe was lauded by reviewers for its excellent handling and balance, its cutting-edge design, and for its well-appointed interior. The styling of the car has been compared to the Ferrari 400 GT, with both cars sharing a similar side profile and angular design language.

Whereas 400 GT values are now pushing $100,000+ USD it’s still possible to buy a Fiat 130 Coupe for a far more affordable $17,500+ USD, the Fiat also enjoys vastly less expensive maintenance costs, though of course it also has considerably less brandname prestige.

Fast Facts – The Fiat 130 Coupe

The Fiat 130 Coupe was released in 1971 as the two-door GT version of the four-door Fiat 130 Saloon, which had been released back in 1969.
The late 1960s and 1970s were a time when many automakers opted for far more angular, origami-like designs led by the likes of Gandini and Giugiaro.
The Fiat 130 Coupe has independent front and rear suspension, and it’s powered by a 3.2 liter V6 with a single overhead cam per bank, and it has 165 bhp at 5,500 rpm.
Just 4,491 examples of the 130 Coupe were made during its 1971 to 1977 production run, and they’re now slowly being discovered by collectors.

The Fiat 130 – A Classic 1970s Italian GT Car

The Fiat 130 Coupe was designed by Paolo Martin at Pininfarina, based on the unibody platform used by Gian Paolo Boano to develop the earlier four-door Fiat 130 Saloon car. The 130 series was the successor to the outgoing Fiat 2300 models, which had styling that was well and truly outdated by the late 1960s.

The styling of the car is pure 1970s, it’s won both fans and detractors over the years but it’s now becoming recognized as a desirable (and affordable) classic.

Pininfarina designer Paolo Martin was tasked with designing a new GT coupe for Fiat on the 130 platform, it had to have cutting edge styling, luxury that would rival similar GT cars from Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz, and it needed excellent handling.

Fiat executives saw the 130 series as a new platform that would lead them into the 1970s, and much of the company’s future was riding on it. Martin’s design work on the 130 Coupe was awarded a design prize after its release, and it almost certainly had some small amount of influence on the Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2 which was released a year later with styling by Leonardo Fioravanti at Pininfarina.

The 130 series vehicles utilized standard three-box unibody design, the 130 Coupe has MacPherson struts with longitudinal torsion bars up front and a modified Chapman strut with coil springs in the rear.

ZF power steering came as standard and the steering wheel is adjustable for rake and reach. Paolo Martin’s design work reached into the interior of the car as well, he designed the seats, central console, dashboard, and a number of other features.

In the engine bay you’ll find a crossflow 60º V6 engine that had been designed by former Ferrari engine designer Aurelio Lampredi. This Fiat V6 has an iron block and alloy heads with a single overhead cam per bank and two valves per cylinder, power output was 165 bhp at 5,500 rpm.

The interior is luxurious by the standards of the era, Fiat wanted the 130 Coupe to compete with similar GT cars from companies like Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz.

Ultimately the Fiat 130 Coupe wouldn’t be a major sales success for Fiat, with fewer than 4,500 made in total between 1971 and 1977. The styling of the car has long been controversial with some loving it and some being less enthusiastic, particularly of the front end, but today it’s becoming recognized as an under-appreciated 1970s classic.

The Fiat 130 Coupe Shown Here

The 130 Coupe you see here is a 1975 model, it received a partial restoration in 2015 with the bodywork and paintwork being redone, the bumpers were re-chromed, and the seats were reupholstered.

While this work was being done the transmission, differential, and universal joints were all overhauled and a new set of Michelin tires were fitted.

The car now presents in generally good overall condition the price guide is $17,500 to $29,000 USD and it’s due to cross the auction block with Artcurial on the 24th of October. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Artcurial

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A Rare Talbot-Lago T14 America Barquette

Very few examples of the Talbot-Lago T14 America Barquette were built, largely due to the precarious financial situation the company found itself in by the end of the 1950s.

The final, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to stay in business would see the French automaker building cars fitted with V8 engines sourced from BMW in the hope of appealing to Americans, who liked V8 power and European sports cars.

Unfortunately the strategy would fail, though not for want of effort or aim, the same strategy worked well for a number of other automakers. The car you see here was built from parts left over after the company was acquired by Simca, it was built in the style of the Talbots that raced at Le Mans in 1956 and thanks to its 2.5 liter V8 and lightweight alloy bodywork it’s a quick machine.

Fast Facts – The Talbot-Lago T14 America Barquette

This car was very nearly never built, its chassis and parts were part of a batch bought by former Talbot racing driver Georges Grignard after the firm collapsed in 1959.
Brothers Dominique and Marc Dupont bought some of these parts from Grignard and painstakingly built a handful of cars the same way the 1956 Le Mans cars had been built.
Talbot-Lago had enjoyed a series of race victories including multiple Grand Prix wins and a victory at the 1950 Le Mans.
Though highly respected for their road and race cars the company wouldn’t survive into the 1960s.

Talbot-Lago

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Talbot-Lago was a globally recognized builder of Grand Prix winning race cars and luxurious road-going sports cars.

The car was specifically designed to look like the 1956 Le Mans race cars, though it’s likely faster thanks to its vintage BMW V8 engine.

The company had originally started out all the way back in 1896 as Automobiles Darracq France, after being bought out the company was renamed Talbot in 1916 (though they still regularly used the Darracq name), and in 1936 Talbot was acquired by Antonio Lago in a a management buy-out – resulting in the name Talbot-Lago.

Some of the most beautiful cars of the 1930s and 1940s were based on Talbot underpinnings, typically with bodies built by leading coachbuilders like Figoni & Falaschi and Saoutchik.

Antonio Lago had a deep appreciation for the importance of racing for any car manufacturer, as much for publicity as for engineering advancement, and so the Talbot name regularly lined up on the grids of many of the era’s most important races.

One of the company’s most successful cars from this time was the Talbot-Lago T26C, a single-seat race car with a naturally-aspirated 4.5 liter straight-six engine and a four-speed gearbox. The T26C would place second in its first race – the 1948 Monaco Grand Prix, and it would win both the 1949 Belgian Grand Prix and the 1949 French Grand Prix.

A specially modified two-seat version of this car would be entered into the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans and take outright victory, a major moment for the French brand. The T26C would continue taking wins well into the 1950s, with Doug Whiteford winning the 1952 and 1953 Australian Grand Prix.

The interior is as spartan as you may expect, with just the essentials. As was normal for a sports/racing roadster in the 1950s the car has no seat belts, no side windows, and no folding top.

In 1954 Talbot-Lago unveiled a new engine called the T14 LS and then a year later in 1955 they unveiled the car that would be powered by it – the beautiful Talbot-Lago 2500 Coupé T14 LS. The engine would be a disaster for the company, it was unreliable and it quickly earned a bad reputation, with little choice in the matter they licensed the new 2.5 liter BMW V8 and renamed the car the “Talbot Lago America.”

Only 12 or so examples of this car would be sold before Anthony Lago realized the writing was on the wall, and accepted the offer from Simca to buy Talbot-Lago and all of its assets in 1958. Simca would continue building the car for a short time, though with their own Ford flathead-derived V8s which were notably less powerful.

Talbot-Lago would be shuttered in 1959, leaving a decades long legacy of road and race cars that still create energetic bidding wars at auction on both sides of the Atlantic and no small amount of subterfuge.

The Talbot-Lago T14 America Barquette

The car you see here only exists thanks to French brothers Dominique and Marc Dupont. Both men were dyed-in-the-wool Talbot lovers, in fact Dominique had been the president of the Talbot Club for many years.

Power is provided by the powerful BMW V8 that was also used in the BMW 507 and the BMW 503.

After Talbot was shuttered the two men were able to buy a stock of original parts from former Talbot racing driver Georges Grignard, and they set about creating what would likely be the last Talbot-Lagos ever made.

The Talbot-Lago T14 America Barquette you see here was constructed by the brothers in the 1970s using a correct chassis, mechanical parts, and BMW V8 engine. They had an alloy body built as it would have been back in the mid-1950s, using the style elements of the 1956 Le Mans Talbot-Lago, that had been driven by Louis Rosier and Jean Behra.

Thanks to the car’s very low weight and its relatively powerful 1950s BMW V8 engine it’s capable of impressive performance even by modern standards. It was given a major servicing in 2020 and it’s now being listed for sale with Artcurial.

The price guide is $92,500 – $127,000 USD and you can click here if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid.

Images courtesy of Artcurial

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The Dowsetts Comet – This Is The Only Road-Going Comet In The World

The Dowsetts Comet is a car that many haven’t heard of due to the fact that they’re only produced in very limited numbers in a small factory deep in the English countryside.

Despite their English roots, the cars are powered by fire-breathing American V8s giving them performance as good (or better) than any modern sports car.

The company is headed by Ant Anstead, a renowned engineer and mechanic who became a celebrity in his own right thanks to his extensive on camera presenting work on television programs like For the Love of Cars and Wheeler Dealers.

Fast Facts – The Dowsetts Comet

The Dowsetts Comet is the work of the Dowsetts Classic Car Company, formerly known as Evanta. They build bespoke sports cars in very limited numbers out of a workshop on Dowsetts Farm.
In the spirit of 1960s performance cars like the Shelby Cobra and the Jensen Interceptor, the Comet uses a British designed chassis with an American V8, providing excellent handling and ample power.
The Comet has a steel spaceframe chassis, a front-mid-mounted GM LS3 V8, a Tremec 5-speed gearbox, and a limited-slip differential.
Very few examples of the Comet have been made, in fact at the time of writing it’s believed to be just two, and the car you see here is the only one on the road as the other example is being converted to electric drive by Anstead.

The Dowsetts Comet – A Modern Classic Car

Many people in the automotive world, myself included, believe that automobile design may have peaked in the 1960s. It was a decade that gave us the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Jaguar E-Type, the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato, the BMW 2002, the Lamborghini Miura, the Ferrari 250 GT SWB, and an impossibly long list of other timeless classics.

The beautiful styling of the Comet has been winning it accolades since it was first introduced back in 2018.

What Ant Anstead and the team at the Dowsetts Classic Car Company (now known as Faeger) set out to do was to capture the design aesthetic of this era, including its beautiful design language and its analogue driving experience, and incorporate it all into a brand new car.

Each Comet starts out as a steel spaceframe chassis, independent suspension is fitted to each corner along with disc brakes and finally a set of Dowsetts bespoke wheels. The body is ultra lightweight thanks to the use of a Kevlar-reinforced composite material for all external panels.

Inside you’ll find opulent red quilted leather, a Moto-Lita wood-rimmed steering wheel, and unexpected modern conveniences like air-conditioning, a reversing camera, and satellite navigation.

The Dowsetts Comet – Performance Figures

Anstead reportedly invested a lot of time in the handling and performance of the Comet, as a result the cars have been lauded by reviewers. The performance figures certainly back this up, with a 0 – 60 mph time of just 3.9 seconds thanks to power output of 430 hp by that LS3 V8.

The interior is beautifully appointed, with ample quilted leather, turned aluminum, and a classic Moto-Lita steering wheel.

The owner of this car, chassis #002, ordered it after seeing chassis #001 under construction. He specified that it be set up for grand touring duties which is why the interior is so well appointed, but after covering just 2,500 miles he suffered a back injury which makes it all but impossible for him to drive the car.

“I got involved with Ant Anstead over four years ago and on visiting his workshop spotted the Barchetta (open top early version of the Comet) and fell in love with it. Ant had by then started work on the Comet and I agreed to buy number two – the first having already been purchased off plan by another client and is now in America with Ant who is trying to fit an electric motor in it so mine is still the only road going Comet in the world!” – the current owner of the Dowsetts Comet

The Comet is now for sale through Silverstone Auctions and it’s due to roll across the auction block on the 13th of November. At the time of writing there’s no price guide listed, if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Above Video: See and gear the Comet in action in this short film from Dowsetts Classic Cars.

Images courtesy of Silverstone Auctions

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A Rare “Quad Headlight” Jaguar E-Type

This unusual Jaguar E-Type was built to special order for the 6th Earl of Cawdor, Hugh John Vaughan Campbell. The specification included a balanced engine, Koni shock absorbers, competition wire wheels, Restall reclining seats, and a Webasto roof.

After the car was delivered it was taken to Abbey Panels where it was converted into one of just three “Quad Headlight” E-Type coupes ever made by the company. Of course, any changes made to the styling of the famously good-looking E-Type are likely to be controversial, and the Abbey Panels quad headlight conversion has certainly divided opinion over the years.

Fast Facts – The Quad Headlight E-Type

The Jaguar E-Type was originally introduced in 1961, it was quickly heralded as one of the most beautiful cars of all time and one of the fastest production cars in the world.
This car was built as a special order for the 6th Earl of Cawdor, after delivery he sent it to Abbey Panels for the quad headlight conversion, and 18 months later he had a serious accident in the car which (luckily) saw him fly out of the Wesbasto roof (a soft top) avoiding serious injury.
After its accident the car was placed into storage where it would remain for over 40 years until being rediscovered and restored back to original condition.
Since its restoration “The Earl’s E-Type” has taken part in historic car tours and rallies in Europe, as well as extensive touring.

The Earl’s Unusual E-Type

By the time the 6th Earl of Cawdor placed his order for an E-Type in 1965 Jaguar had already been dealing with highly-placed members of British society, including royalty, for decades. That said, there’s no doubt that the Earl’s order received special attention.

The seamless work of Abbey Panels is so good the car looks like it came this way from the Jaguar factory originally.

The Earl was an oftentimes controversial man, and decisions he made are still sparking additional controversies today almost 30 years after his death in 1993. The decision to take a regular E-Type coupe and have the front modified to include an extra pair of headlights was just as controversial in 1965 as it is today.

Living in a remote castle-like mansion in the Welsh countryside, it’s likely that the Earl wanted the extra lights for returning home on those long winter nights.

The quad headlight conversion involved removing the original headlight and then modifying the front fenders and bonnet to accommodate a larger light array with two headlights fitted side by side at each side.

Additional shark gill-like vents were added further back on the front fenders, and the new headlights were left open – rather than sheltered behind glass covers as with regular Series 1 E-Types. Later E-Types would all have their headlights left open like this due to new federal safety laws in the United States – a critically important overseas market for the company.

It’s likely that the Earl wanted the extra headlights for returning home on dark, rural Welsh roads after nightfall.

A Crash And A Rebuild

Just 18 months after receiving the car the Earl would be involved in a serious accident in which he was flung through the fabric Webasto roof. The car was recovered and placed into storage for well over 40 years before being discovered and rebuilt.

As it stands today the car looks exactly as it did the day it was delivered to the Earl by Abbey Panels, with its rare quad headlight arrangement. E-Types that were custom-built in period always attract some attention when they come up for sale, particularly well-known and rare models like the car shown here.

While the styling of this car has always been divisive it does have its fans, so it’ll be interesting to see what it sells for when the auction hammer falls. It’s due to roll across the auction block with Silverstone Auctions on the 13th of November.

If you’d like to read more about this unusual E-Type or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.