International Lancia Forums

Johnny, I envy your experience with newer Lancias, particular the Gamma. I'd love to own one of those. They are beautiful and rare and it makes sense that straightening out a few Achilles' heels in them is all it takes to make them excellent. I also envy you your current Zagato experience.

I am amused that you find the Beta coupe to be more restful at speed over journeys than the Fulvia. It must be the U.S. market cars, but I always found my Fulvias (coupe and Sport) to be more relaxing highway cars because their engines sounded and felt more at ease with high revs. I have a U.S. spec injection 2000 Beta coupe.

Being only a bit above five foot nine, I've always had the luxury of fitting nicely in Italian cars. My Sport had a Webasto sunroof which meant that it had a false ceiling to support the mechanism so there was even LESS headroom in my car than in yours. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feel inside the car and delighted in the shapely hood in front of me. I loved the fact that I could drive in the rain with the Webasto open and not get wet as long as the speed was at least 10 mph or so.

Who needs a trunk when you have the Sport? Just open the hatch and pitch it in! I shoved a large Christmas tree in that car. I moved my household two different times during my ownership of that car. I just opened the rear hatch and heaved things in. A few journeys back and forth and I was done. I had my Fulvia coupe for the second of those moves. Hopeless. You'd think you have a trunk with that car until you open it and see that the spare uses all the best parts of it up. The Fulvia Sport is the smallest, sleekest, fleetest, most exotic and also most proficient moving van in the world. You've undoubtedly spent great sums restoring your car and would be horrified at what I used to do with my trusty, rusty unrestored example.

Yes, I do remember that blind spot. But I was driving a RHD car in a LHD country so I had more pressing vision problems to deal with. I did have outside mirrors on both sides of the car. They were very stylish original items, aerodynamic and very much in keeping with the design of the car. You could not adjust them to show you anything useful to save your soul. I learned to turn my head a lot. At least in those days (1980s) there weren't all these Chelsea tractors on the road. Incidentally, the Sport's blind spot has nothing on the typical blind spots in a convertible when its top is up. My Alfa spider taught me to hang my head out the window before making a lane change, a discipline now useful for driving the ragtop Flaminia.

Bart, yours and Johnny's posts remind me how much the change in the public's automotive taste to gargantuan trash has degraded the driving experience. I recently noticed when looking for my current regular driver in a parking lot (Alfa 164) that even IT has a lower roof profile than most of the other sedans, let alone the SUVs. My Beta coupe used to seem big when I bought it as a relief car for my Fulvia coupe but now its virtually a microcar. People assume that the driver of such a car must be lost in hopeless penury and avoid it. Unless they don't see it at all; for some drivers the Beta does seem to be finished with invisible paint.

With the Flaminias, I've found that two tailpipes of luxuriant 1950s/60s era unscrubbed emissions are delightfully good deterrents to the tailgate crowd.

Randy A you seem to have somewhat a soft-spot in your heart for Automobili Italia which is good.
For, if you did not I'd (we'd) laugh less & less often.
In order to make sense of: what you wrote; who you are (in Fulvia terms) & where you are located-
I went back to the old "Waltzing Matida & Drifting Fulvia Blogs".
Now I know that you are a " West-Coaster". Your above reference to "Chelsea tractors" ( I assume Range Rovers & that ilk of 4wd semi-jumbo-ocean-liners) ... made me thing, for a minute, that you had somehow relocated yourself to the UK.
Your driving of a (dual mirror - WOW - I've never seen a Z w/ 2 mirrors !) RHD Z Sport in a LHD country
( I assume that this was in USA) was also a bit confusing, for a minute.
& I haven't had a drop of wine or any other spirit, in days (maybe ts my problem ).

This all leads to a # of ?'s; which you may wish to answer or may wish to ignore!
1) a Z Sport with a webasto roof ?
2) who in the whirrl would do that to a Z? may I assume a previous owner ?
3) & where / when was is done.
4) a cheap mans air conditioner
& more
4) you have:
a Fulvia ? & a Beta ? & a Flaminia & a Alfa & what else...besides a big garage / barn / factory .
5) does the Webasto- Roof Fulvia still exist in your or someone else's life ? or did it rust into the sunset ?

quote # 1:
"Fulvia Sport is smallest, sleekest, fleetest, most exotic & also most proficient moving van in the world"
Well, that is one way to explain it
quote # 2:
"You've undoubtedly spent great sums restoring your car". Ummmmmmmmmm.....lets just move onto a different subject, since I think "this subject" will raise my blood pressure (don't worry ... I'm healthy) & that of many other Fulvisti.
Actually, I was 'blessed' in that I was able to recover a certain amount of $ from the seller, which is another story & I've since decided to "pretend it happened to someone else & not me". Freudian Denial !!

I'd hazard to say that there are quite many Fulvisti-in-this-World who will "pretend it really happened to someone else & not them". See Lucas's blog of 27-12-07 & say "OUCH":

FINALLY: S1 Z Sport had a hidden spare tire & ( I believe) a fairly useful " trunk, boot, kofferraum, coffre, sistema del bagaglio, cargador del equipaje" etc.
S2 Sport do not have a hidden spare; it fills a major % of what should be the "trunk"...and anyway, that is what "soft-luggage is for. Who needs 'ironed-clothes' anyway !!!

Fun in a Z: driving around with the hatch slightly-lifted is somehow "cool" & playing with it in traffic probably makes anyone observing "reach for the nearest Bottiglia di Vino".
If a christmas-tree in a Z, than a very small one


!Randy Adams wrote:
>
> Johnny, I envy your experience with newer Lancias,
> particular the Gamma. I'd love to own one of those. They
> are beautiful and rare and it makes sense that straightening
> out a few Achilles' heels in them is all it takes to make
> them excellent. I also envy you your current Zagato
> experience.
>
> I am amused that you find the Beta coupe to be more restful
> at speed over journeys than the Fulvia. It must be the U.S.
> market cars, but I always found my Fulvias (coupe and Sport)
> to be more relaxing highway cars because their engines
> sounded and felt more at ease with high revs. I have a U.S.
> spec injection 2000 Beta coupe.
>
> Being only a bit above five foot nine, I've always had the
> luxury of fitting nicely in Italian cars. My Sport had a
> Webasto sunroof which meant that it had a false ceiling to
> support the mechanism so there was even LESS headroom in my
> car than in yours. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feel inside
> the car and delighted in the shapely hood in front of me. I
> loved the fact that I could drive in the rain with the
> Webasto open and not get wet as long as the speed was at
> least 10 mph or so.
>
> Who needs a trunk when you have the Sport? Just open the
> hatch and pitch it in! I shoved a large Christmas tree in
> that car. I moved my household two different times during my
> ownership of that car. I just opened the rear hatch and
> heaved things in. A few journeys back and forth and I was
> done. I had my Fulvia coupe for the second of those moves.
> Hopeless. You'd think you have a trunk with that car until
> you open it and see that the spare uses all the best parts of
> it up. The Fulvia Sport is the smallest, sleekest, fleetest,
> most exotic and also most proficient moving van in the
> world. You've undoubtedly spent great sums restoring your
> car and would be horrified at what I used to do with my
> trusty, rusty unrestored example.
>
> Yes, I do remember that blind spot. But I was driving a RHD
> car in a LHD country so I had more pressing vision problems
> to deal with. I did have outside mirrors on both sides of
> the car. They were very stylish original items, aerodynamic
> and very much in keeping with the design of the car. You
> could not adjust them to show you anything useful to save
> your soul. I learned to turn my head a lot. At least in
> those days (1980s) there weren't all these Chelsea tractors
> on the road. Incidentally, the Sport's blind spot has
> nothing on the typical blind spots in a convertible when its
> top is up. My Alfa spider taught me to hang my head out the
> window before making a lane change, a discipline now useful
> for driving the ragtop Flaminia.

I do have a very soft spot for the Italian cars. Soft in the head I suppose.

My Fulvia Sport was a Series 1, 1968 vintage model brought over to the US by UK citizen when she emigrated. I bought it in 1984. The car came with the Webasto and also a full supply of British Isles rust. It was missing the rear hatch ram and motor. The seller had installed some nasty latch from a Triumph GT6 to keep it closed. I decided to remove that and fill the hole and just let gravity do the job. I didn't believe in locking cars anyway; I'd rather have the car searched and left undamaged.

It was my first pur sang Lancia, following a somewhat troublesome 1976 Beta coupe. The Sport's master cylinder was clapped out at the time I bought it and in 1984 you couldn't source M/C rebuild kits (not in the States anyway) so I installed something from a Mazda if I remember right. There was too much clearance between the pedal rod and the M/C piston but once pedal travel closed up the space it worked like a charm. I had to install a brake light switch on the pedal carrier. Second gear synchro was tired but the transaxle was otherwise quiet. I learned to double clutch for downshifts and no problem. There were rust holes in all the rocker panels and a nice road-inspection hole in the front passenger's footwell. But Fulvias were criticized way back in the 60s for being overweight. That "overweight" meant that the cars could keep running in one piece even though half their sills were rotted away. The rectangular headlights' lens seals were tired and one of the lamps would fill up one-third with water just like a fishbowl whenever it rained hard. It was very amusing to look at. It never did short out the bulb. The jewelry was good all around the car.

I adored that car and drove it for five years as my primary means of transportation, not only in town but also up and down the state of California. I taught myself most of what I hadn't already learned about the mechanical guts of cars from my first car (a 1971 Fiat 124 Sport that stripped its timing belt three weeks after I bought it!) on that Sport, not because it was unreliable--it really wasn't--but it WAS old and there were things that needed doing and I did overhaul the engine after I bought my 1.2 Series 1 coupe in 1987, since I now had the chance to do so and I knew the engine would appreciate the renewal. (It did.) Every friend I had was terrified of the car--especially since they'd have to ride in the suicide seat facing oncoming traffic with no steering wheel--until they eventually noticed after a while that it just kept going without mishaps. I learned the virtues of an overbuilt car, because that's what the Fulvia was.

The fact that it was such a beater made the experience all that much better. I knew that it could never be a restoration candidate so I could just relax and drive and enjoy it just as if it were, say, 1973 and having an oldish Lancia Fulvia was no big deal. The Xmas tree was about 7 feet tall. Not huge, but definitely your normal domestic Xmas tree. Not small. But yes, the spare was out of the way down below in its special little hatch.

The one thing that neither the Sport nor I could survive was some unknown vandal taking a baseball bat to the windshield. That's what I found when I returned to the car in Hollywood one night in 1989. And that's the only thing that stopped me driving that car. The car was pushed behind the garage and covered. I just couldn't bring myself to strip it and sell the parts and junk the hull, which is really what I should have done.

By the time of the windshield disaster I'd had my 1.2 coupe for two years. It was actually out of commission at the moment due to head gasket failure. It was another rust bucket, sold new in Michigan, so again I could just drive and enjoy. I ended up just popping the Sport's 1.3 engine in place of the 1.2 (using the original 818.130 transaxle with bigger 175-section tires to bring the final drive to something reasonable). All of this stuff will just make Huib want to die, but in my view I was giving two parts cars extended useful lives and giving myself cheap and stress-free pleasure. They were built to be driven and loved, not pecked apart like carcasses.

I had become spoiled by having two Fulvias to drive alternately for my ordinary transportation, however doggy they were. It was a great life. I decided to try another Beta (the '81 coupe) to serve as the alternate car. Needless to say, it never met the Fulvia's standard of reliability but it was (and still is) quite pretty and eventually I found a shop that knew how to make the car work. (There is no way you could get me to work on the rat's maze underhood environs of the Beta so long as I have a job to go to!) I never see another Beta coupe on the road; this car is now effectively as rare as my Fulvias were.

I finally sold both Fulvias off in 1996 when I found someone else who thought he could make something out of them, even though I dutifully told him that they really and truly were parts cars.

And ever since I have maintained the practice of having two alternate cars for ordinary transportation use. The Beta has played that role since 1990 and the other slot has been my rotating slot for trying out cars I'd been curious about, each for about three years at a time. That's where the Alfa spider went--dependable but torturesome seats--followed by a Maserati Biturbo--no matter what you did you couldn't fix that car's many defects--and now the rotating slot is filled by an Alfa 164 on which, just today, I have had to improvise a fix for a stupid brittle plastic headlight bulb retainer that isn't available any longer. The lesson I have learned with the 164 is that I never get comfortable in a car that large; the next will definitely be smaller.

The Flaminias are the "good" cars. I bought them when I finally had some money. I keep two of them in my two-car garage at home and another in a rented garage just far enough away to make for a nice drive in one of the at-home cars to go swap with it. They are nice cars and when I drive one I am terrified of somebody smashing into it. I do a certain amount of my own work on them but I'm always terrified of bodging such nice cars. You see? There was logic in owning those Fulvia rustbuckets.

I'll miss them forever.

Wow, go away for a week and look at all this interesting commentary! I almost missed the boat!

Anybody who puts the Fulvia in the b) class is just not driving it. While I agree that it is a most stable car for it's age, the sheer joy of back roads over highways has made me glad to be late to work on several ocassions. I don't use it as a daily driver (Audi S8) but I'm getting as much time behind the wheel as I can right now while the Texas weather is conducive to a car without AC. And of course, it's also still new enough to me that it's still an exciting exercise in the "driving experience".

It certainly is a bit underpowered, as many have stated here and many old articles seemed to opine even when the car was new. But it's just so much fun running up and down the gears. I just love "rowing that oar" and listening to that little farty exhaust sing it's song! I try not to stop, as starting off from a dead stop in first gear is the least exciting aspect of my little 1.3. It' is NOT a rubber burner, that's for sure. But get me into 2nd and beyond, and it's a ton of fun.

For the "Toy Run" I did with the local Ferrari club back in December, the organizer laid out a very twisty curvy route on back roads around a local lake. I had no problems keeping up with the V12s... until the road opened up of course. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of laughs and kudos from drivers at the end of the run.

Okay, that's my 2 cents worth. A)!

you probably have already tried this; I do it when I remember to do it.
forget 1st & save your nerves ; with minor foot-fiddling 2d becomes a good 1st; on my Gamma as well.
If, for some reason - spelled stupidity - I do start-off in 1st, I "pretend shift into 3d & then, without having released the clutch, back down to 2d, reminding myself to start in 2d the next time. This herky-jerky off-the-line procedure means I am blocking whomever is behind me with my "lack of brisk acceleration",
I also try to avoid rush-hour traffic & do my darndest to time traffic lights so that I don't come to a standstill

Huib, you are right. The feeling is really depending on the position where you stand. Moreover it is depending on what you want to compare.

For me, I have Coupe Fiat 16V turbo for daily use. I install sports suspention kit to this car and 16 inch tyer. Sometimes I drive it in circuit, too. Therefore I feel it is bit harsh and bumpy in rough road. Comparison between this and Fulvia Sport, although my Sport has 14 inch tyer, the feeling of driving Sport is smoother.

Amazingly Fulvia uses leaf springs not coil one. Especially in front, the leaf springs is mounted as sidewise. I normaly think leaf one is quite old and cheap system than coil one. But it works really well.

Of course I always recall my excitement of driving Fulvia Sport whenever I sense tiny differences such as suction noise, exhaust sound, vibration of steering, and so on.

Vibration of steering??

Balance the wheels/tyres???

Tim

Nothing wrong with leaf springs. They are very expensive to make. The coil springs are a lot cheaper which is the reason they are now used on all cars.

My question was to experiment a bit by varying the length of your spine. By using the small muscles attached to the vertebrae you can alter the length of your spine. The results are very interesting. Claire has been experimenting too, she says the result is spectacular. I hope that one day she will tell us.

The first-to-second shift is never going to be super-quick with that dogleg gate, but with synthetic oil in the gearbox and regular greasing of the two nipples in the linkage mine was transformed from stiff and cantankerous to remarkably good for an S2 Fulvia. You need a flexible extension on the grease gun to reach the nipple that's under the heater plenum. I also removed the gear lever gaiter and peeled back the rubber boot beneath and smeared lots of moly grease over everything that moved within, just to make sure.

Contemporary road tests and modern buying guides talk about the difficult one-to-two shift but mine is fine now, even when cold. I use Valvoline EP75W/90. Remember there are two drain plugs.

John