Just Arrived

[Keep it stiff]

My new toy has just arrived from Italy.

It is a Fiat Osca 1600s, it seems to be in reasonable condition and my plan is get a few things tidied up so that it is ready to enjoy next year. (Including the fitting of the hard top!)

First challenge is the MOT, I will wait to see what surprises are awaiting me.

[Keep it stiff]

I had it on a ramp this afternoon, first chance to take a decent look. The goods news it that it looks very solid. All the typical rot areas are sound. Evidence of filler in a few places, rear wheel arch edges for example. It is under-sealed and on the whole far better than I was expecting. The soft-top needs to be removed to allow the hard-top to fit correctly. I really like the hard top, I feel it enhances the lines. The window in the soft-top is opaque so I'm going to leave that off for now, you can buy complete hoods but I will wait a while.

For the MOT there are a few lighting gremlins, but then I guess it would not be a Fiat without these. Underneath a few of the brake pipes are suspect including one that has a spliced joint, quite why you would bother making the effort to do that when you could replace the whole pipe is beyond me. The battery was pretty flat but it started without any problems, it starts, stops and steers, good enough for me, remains to be seen if it does these well enough for Mr Tester.

The tyres are a bit of a mystery, plenty of tread on them but someone has taken a rotary brush to the sidewalls to remove all the ID. All four have been treated the same both on the inner and outer sidewalls. The only thing you can make out is "Made in Isreal". Given that the Isrealis are not well known for their tyre making expertise I will be replacing them with Cinturatos. MOT Tester may have a view on these.

This weekend I need to do do the Inland Revenue declaration and if it gets through the MOT next week I can then take on Swansea. I have read that DVLA are very helpful when it comes to the registration of imported classics, I hope this is so.

MOT is booked for Monday, fingers crossed. A few other odd jobs to do and it will be ready to use. I'm planning to have it re-trimmed this winter, I fancy tan with contrasting piping. I'm also going to fit new carpets, again in tan, these are available via US ebay.

Very interesting to see the styling similarities with the Peugeot, as has been said all from the same drawing board.

OSCA is what the Maserati Brothers did with their time after selling what had been their lives' work up to that point. The 1600s has a twin cam head with twin side-draft webers. My expertise on these cars is next to none, I'm learning as I go along. For me this was a measured buy as against an impulse one, I had spotted a 1500 for sale, listed in the UK as a recent import, that one was out of my price range and having decided to hunt further I spotted this 1600s listed by an Italian dealer and decided that it ticked my boxes. Something of a punt however I hope the rarity does allow it to be a sound investment and a bit of fun at the same time. As a model of car that I had never previously seen in the flesh until I viewed this one it was a bit of a leap of faith.

I will post more pictures next week and would very much appreciate any further feedback or info.

[Keep it stiff]

It is 1963 by the way.

[Keep it stiff]

RichB said:

ndeed but I imagine the question is what does OSCA have to do with the Fiat?

From an article I found whilst researching this car:

Yet as a small company with no road car production to fall back on (as, say, Ferrari had), OSCA could only go so far and do so much, so they asked Fiat for assistance. The result was that the Maserati brothers licensed the MT4 engine design to Fiat, who in turn supplied examples back to them to race. It was a fantastically beneficial agreement for all parties concerned: Fiat would have a fine twin-cam engine for its top-of-the-line roadster, and the brothers Maserati would have a supplier who could build enough engines that they would be easily homologated under then-current, and ever-changing, rules, and escape tooling and labor costs to boot. Aurelio Lampredi, famously of Ferrari, made sure the OSCA was up to mass-production standards, and starting in 1959 it was available in the Fiat 1500S roadster. (The OSCA name was never badged onto the cars themselves.)
Some may confuse OSCA's engine with Fiat's own homegrown 1,500cc pushrod four, which was in production around the same time, and believe that OSCA's alloy twin-cam head (with chain-driven cams and mechanical tensioners) was fitted to a standard-issue Fiat block. Not true: Fiat's 1,500 was derived from the Lampredi-designed 1,800/2,100/2,300 inline-six (indeed, this 1,500 was two-thirds of the 2,100cc version). Part of the confusion, beyond similar displacements, lies with the notion that Fiat themselves built the OSCA engines--although they were hardly mass produced, requiring plenty of fettling by hand. But the cast-iron block is completely different from a production-line Fiat unit, and the pistons, rods and crank were forged, rather than cast as Fiat's passenger-car-engine pieces were. Standard-issue OSCA engines received a single Weber carburetor, while the upgraded S model received twin side-draft Webers; other visual tells between the Fiat and OSCA 1,500s include a tubular header in lieu of an exhaust manifold, the aluminum engine front cover and the finned oil pan.
The 1500 was understood to be an OSCA engine until 1964, when Fiat introduced its own 1,500cc engine (upgraded from 1,100cc); from then on, the older machines were referred to as 1500 OSCAs. Naturally, Fiat's new pushrod 1,500cc engine appeared in the Spider as well. Yet Fiat still wanted a higher-performance OSCA option, and the old MT4 was stretched to 1,600cc (well, 1,568cc). With the twin-carb option, which earned the machine an S designation, the little 1.6 made an honest 100hp in street trim--fairly saucy for its day.
And who actually built these cars? Fiat built the engines, as discussed, but despite Fiat assigning all OSCA-engined roadsters a bespoke chassis series number of 118, it was Pininfarina who styled, and indeed pieced together, the 1200, 1500 and 1600 coupes and cabriolets from 1960 through the model's end in 1966. Thanks to Fiat GM Vincenzo Bono's decision to concentrate on mass production and send the construction of small-volume specialty cars out-of-house, the house that penned the machine also put it together. More than 20,000 of all models listed above were built on the Pininfarina lines during what Pininfarina's own website calls "a particularly fecund period of work together." Pininfarina also oversaw the roadster's late-1963 facelift, consisting of a flat hood (eliminating the air intake of previous models), revised grille and canted twin headlamps per side.

[Keep it stiff]

The 1600s now has an MOT and with no advisories! As previously identified, the only work that was required was some attention to the brakes, the front flexi-hoses were a bit of a botch and a section of metal pipe had been spliced.

The Inland Revenue registration was quite straight-forward, I started on the V55 today and this will go off to Swansea on Monday along with a fistful of there documents. I hope it will be recorded as 1st Jan 63 and that I will get a pre-suffix plate.

Here are a few more pictures. I'm going to swap the steering wheel for an original Nardi. The key objective for this winter is new trim, I'm going cool on the idea of tan, perhaps red & black would be a better combination. Can't wait to get it on the road!





[url]

|http://thumbsnap.com/JvsWSaxJ[/url]

[Keep it stiff]

RichB said:

Red trim with black carpets would look great with the white. Is that wheel not original or is the Nardi you fancy a wood-rimmed one? And why not

I think the Nardi was a standard item on the 1600s, one of those things that sets it apart from the 1200 and 1500. With my car, it could be that the original owner decided on a spec without the Nardi, or, and what I suspect is more likely, at some point in the history of the car someone removed it. The steering wheel that is fitted is a period item, I just feel that it is not as attractive nor tactile as a Nardi.

Here is the 1600s sales brochure showing the Nardi. Most of the images of 1600s's that I have found on Google also show the Nardi. I have now purchased a Nardi, it is dated 61 which is just two years out for this car, and it is signed, which was not the case with all Nardi wheels of that era.

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RichB said:

ery nice indeed. I don't know if you are in the south but once it's done this would be a lovely car to see at a Goodwood breakfast meet.

Goodwood is a bit of a stretch for breakfast, I will be there for the Revival.

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TooMany2cvs said:

I presume you've sent them the Italian paperwork for it? If so, they'll take the first-reg date from that, and give you an age-related accordingly.
If not, you've probably sent them club- or FIAT-authenticated production date info? What date's on that?

I _think_ they go with the official "1/1/1963-to-31/12/1963 = A suffix", rather than the alleged reality of chaos with individual authorities issuing A-suffix from whenever they felt like it...

I have sent to DVLA pretty well all the documentation that I had along with a covering letter to explain what is what. I put the registration date down as 1st Jan 63 on the V55. I had an Auto Club Italia certificate to confirm the 1963 date and the earliest date on the original Italian ministry document, not that I could understand what it meant, was late 62.

I thought better to send more than less, I even included pictures of the car. Fingers crossed for a painless process!

[Keep it stiff]

Things are not going as smoothly with DVLA as I had wished.

I sent them the V55, a cheque for the registration fee, the NOVA acknowledgement, MOT, insurance, Italian log book, invoice, Fiat D'Italia certificate of authenticity, history of ownership going back to 1963, copy of my driving licence, pictures, a covering letter explaining everything I enclosed and even my gas bill as ID!

I received their reply on Saturday, they want to register the car as 1994 and they sent all my documents back along with a request for payment of the registration fee and road tax.

The 1994 date is on the Italian log book and as far as I can make out refers to the car being re-registered with a new Italian number. It seems that they have not taken any notice of anything else. Frustrating or what?

I have contacted the Fiat Club in the hope that their archivist will be able to substantiate the date of manufacturer via the chassis number and I will gather up further information to resubmit.

It is such a shame that we have lost the local DVLA offices as I'm sure that in these circumstances it would have been so much easier to present detail over the counter and respond first hand to any questions rather than be stuck with a remote process. Do they have a counter service at Swansea?