RE: SOTW: Fiat Coupe 20v Turbo

[Mario Cirillo]

Hello All,

Im Mario, myself and a team of 6 others run the Fiat Coupé Club in the UK. Its quite pleasing to see so many good comments about these cars and also the amount of comments this thread has created.

I thought I would share a few photos of my coupe that some of you may have seen in Practical Classics Magazine this month.

http://www.fccuk.org/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=show...

[C8PPO]

Hello Fccukers!

[Mr2Mike]

Nigel_O said:

there's absolutely no reason why a Coupe should be any more expensive to run and maintain than any other car.

That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. High parts pricing coupled with the general age of the car and the high performance are all good reasons why it will cost more to run than an awful lot of cars.

However, if you have a scheme whereby I can reduce my servicing and maintenance costs to that of a 1.0L Toyota Aygo then I'm interested.

[ImDesigner]

Any excuse!



Hi fellow FCCUK'ers!

ImDesigner aka GJ88

[Mario Cirillo]

[johnpeat]

Mr2Mike said:

That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. High parts pricing coupled with the general age of the car and the high performance are all good reasons why it will cost more to run than an awful lot of cars.

However, if you have a scheme whereby I can reduce my servicing and maintenance costs to that of a 1.0L Toyota Aygo then I'm interested.

Your Aygo will have to go to a Toyota dealer where you'll be charged a premium price for a quick oil swap done by barely-trained monkeys. It's also depreciating (a Coupe wouldn't) and I doubt insurance would differ much (one is quick, one is worth money).

As with anything it depends on what you want - if you want a 3cyl towncar, buying a 5cyl turbo GT car is silly - and the opposite obviously applies.

[johnpeat]

Andy20vt said:

And why is that ridiculous? The Coupe benefits from fixed price road tax since they are pre 2001 cars. Specialists keep servicing and maintainence pretty affordable (full service with aircon for £180 anyone). Coupe's are no longer depreciating - the hidden huge cost of car ownership. Fuel economy is pretty good at around 28-30mpg. So far as performance cars go, running a Coupe can be pretty cheap.

Let's do a years comparison shall we against a new runaround - say a nearly new Vauxhall Corsa

Corsa

Depreciation - £3,000
Servicing, parts, tyres, consumables - £350
Road tax - £75
Fuel (10k year) - £1,300
Insurance - £300

Total annual spend = £5,025

Fiat Coupe

Depreciation - £Nil
Servicing, parts, tyres, consumables - £1,000
Road tax - £215
Fuel (10k year) - £2,100
Insurance - £600

Total annual spend = £3,915

Okay so these figures are estimates, but you can run and maintain a Coupe for a lot less than a lot of cars.

The only comment I can offer is that the depreciation on the Corsa is a bit silly - but even at half that, the difference is not much money (£400 for a year in a 200+ hp GT car over a stshed!?)

[Nigel_O]

Mr2Mike said:

That is a blatantly ridiculous statement. High parts pricing coupled with the general age of the car and the high performance are all good reasons why it will cost more to run than an awful lot of cars.

However, if you have a scheme whereby I can reduce my servicing and maintenance costs to that of a 1.0L Toyota Aygo then I'm interested.

It's not ridiculous - I've been running Coupes for over a decade at up to 30,000 miles a year, so I'm as well placed as anybody to understand the running costs. I have a log of everything I've spent (which is kept well away from Wifey...) so it's not just supposition either.

A standard Coupe can easily be run on a (relative) shoestring budget. OK, you may not be fitting Toyo or Goodyear tyres, or Pagid brake pads. You may not be filling it up with V-Power or running it on £15 per litre oil, but it CAN be done (and many people on the FCCUK forum do it).

They key with Coupes is preventative maintenance. For a 20vt doing weekend miles, £500 a year is plenty. For the car that started this whole thread, there is very little likelihood of any major bills in the next 3-5 years, as all of the big stuff has already been done. So - all you'd be looking at is routine servicing and consumables. If you buy wisely, these can be had very reasonably and with so many cars being scrapped over the last few years (there's only 1/3 of the original number still on the roads in the UK), good quality secondhand parts are amazingly easy to come by.

As has been mentioned above, when you take depreciation into account, running a Coupe like the current Shed for three
years will probably be cheaper than running a 1-year old supermini.

[bazza1000]

A lot of car for the money, mega cheap!

[bunyarra]

Had 2 - nearly lost my license twice in the turbo version. Lovely cars and wish they still made them. Did go through tyres rather quickly!

[Nigel_O]

bunyarra said:

Had 2 - nearly lost my license twice in the turbo version. Lovely cars and wish they still made them. Did go through tyres rather quickly!

LOL - very easy to do - mine nearly cost me my freedom. I managed to hammer past an unmarked Focus ST (on an otherwise deserted DC) flat out in 5th on a 6-speed car - work out the speed for yourselves. Thankfully, I surprised him and he didn't have time to switch on the speed recording gizzmos, so I got off with a fairly substantial rollicking.

The tyre wear is usually a function of turbo size. The smaller units spool up vry quickly and give a real thump in the back. Bigger turbos are much more gentle - I get around 10k to 12k out of a pair of front tyres on mine

[magooagain]

Edited by magooagain on Thursday 23 February 16:05

[rallycross]

my one looked like it was in primer

[Welshbeef]

Nigel_O said:

LOL - very easy to do - mine nearly cost me my freedom. I managed to hammer past an unmarked Focus ST (on an otherwise deserted DC) flat out in 5th on a 6-speed car - work out the speed for yourselves. Thankfully, I surprised him and he didn't have time to switch on the speed recording gizzmos, so I got off with a fairly substantial rollicking.

The tyre wear is usually a function of turbo size. The smaller units spool up vry quickly and give a real thump in the back. Bigger turbos are much more gentle - I get around 10k to 12k out of a pair of front tyres on mine

Turbo size?? They are one size

Boone could buy a 20v turbo with big turbo or medium or small turbo.

Flat out in 5th past the rozzer. Lol. Why didn't you keep your foot in and take it all he way in 6th you had such a distance between both cars he'd never catch up.

Good Jon no one the less

I loved Hitting the limiter in 3rd then slamming it into4th and hitting the limiter so quickly too 5speed. Do the speed maths...

[Nigel_O]

Welshbeef said:

Turbo size?? They are one size

As standard, yes, but turbos come in lots of different sizes. The stock 20vt unit is a T28 with journal bearings. Popular aftermarket units include simple hybrids, through to the GT28R, GT28RS, GT2871R and GT3071R. Owners with 2.4 conversions are running even bigger units, such as the GT3076R - these will shift more than double the air that a stock unit can deliver.

[Welshbeef]

Nigel_O said:

As standard, yes, but turbos come in lots of different sizes. The stock 20vt unit is a T28 with journal bearings. Popular aftermarket units include simple hybrids, through to the GT28R, GT28RS, GT2871R and GT3071R. Owners with 2.4 conversions are running even bigger units, such as the GT3076R - these will shift more than double the air that a stock unit can deliver.

Has anyone set up a sequential turbo set up one small one massive one

Ubderstand your point re after Market set ups.

[Paulm4]

Ok then fccukers, here is some of my pics....

[carinaman]

Welshbeef said:

£1k a year is e46 M3 budget pa.

I don't know, CAR Magazine had a used E46 M3 as a long termer that came with a BMW approved warranty. I seem to remember the warranty came in handy when it had some serious oil leak problem.


The Shed is on eBay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiat-coupe-20v-turbo-uk-...


Call me cynical, but I am rather tired of fairy tales in car adverts. Why not just P/X it? Readvertising it is doing us all some kind of favour?


I am starting to wonder if 'Buy it now, or the kittens get it' is taught as part of the national curriculum.

Different vendor from a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiat-coupe-20v-turbo-uk-...


Slight whiff of citrus?

Edited by carinaman on Thursday 23 February 23:59

Edited by carinaman on Friday 24th February 00:11

[pstruck]

carinaman said:

The Shed is on eBay

Yes, I spotted that also. Hadn't seen that it was also for sale recently by a different vendor. Hmmm, do I smell a rat?

[Mr2Mike]

Nigel_O said:

It's not ridiculous - I've been running Coupes for over a decade at up to 30,000 miles a year, so I'm as well placed as anybody to understand the running costs.

I've been doing 15k a year for the past 16 years in a variety of cars. The last 4 have been in the coupe and the running costs have been significantly higher than any other car I have had and I do ALL my own servicing and maintenance so this has just been the price of parts and consumables; no labour charges.

I'm not saying it's an expensive car to run - for the performance it's pretty cheap but there is absolutely no way on gods earth it is as cheap as any other car to run. Just because it costs the same as a 10 year old Ford Focus, doesn't mean the running costs are the same and I honestly believe you are blinkered if think this is the case.

Why on earth do you think there are so many utter dogs around? Because people can afford to buy them, but they can't afford to look after them, much like old E36 M3's and other old performance cars.

Andy20vt said:

Let's do a years comparison shall we against a new runaround - say a nearly new Vauxhall Corsa

Completely flawed argument since you have skewed the results by getting a new car, so depreciation is horrendous. How about doing a comparison to a 10 year old Ford Focus 1.6, since the purchase price will be similar, and this fits within Nigel's "any other car" criteria.

johnpeat said:

Your Aygo will have to go to a Toyota dealer

Why on earth do you think this