RE: SOTW: Fiat Coupe 20v Turbo
Discussion
Andy20vt said:
That's exactly the thing with the Fiat Coupe. Most people don't really know what they are and you certainly get a lot of looks driving one. Lots of people ask me what the car is. Most are very surprised when I tell them that it's a Fiat. People also don't realise how quick they are. 0-60 means nothing. The mid range overtaking punch and turbo shove is mind blowing and the faster a Coupe gets, the harder it seems to want to accelerate. 0-100 the Coupe will do in 14.5 sec - that's only 0.5 sec short of the current hot hatch king the 300bhp Focus RS with a time of 14.0 sec. 60-100 is actually marginally faster in the Coupe than the Focus RS.
I enjoyed reading that because they really do feel bloody rapid - my only real complaint is that they're the sort of car which eggs you on all the time - that turbo rush is intoxicating and it WILL lose you your licence in no time (see also Mk1 Audi TT but they're nowhere near as quick).It's not a car to pootle around in really - it CAN pootle but you'll be salivating for the next bit of clear road and 'brrraaaarp' 3 figures (KPH of course)...
Argh, I'm still here and reading every post with interest. I want one of these and am sat here wondering whether they are a viable proposition for a second, weekend fun car. If I could pick up a really good, well looked after example, just how much would it cost me to own and run on this basis?
It is good to hear that there is good, friendly support available through the FCCUK site. The trouble is it would appear that you have to join, at a cost of £15, to access the forums, including buying guide information. I have no problem paying that if I know I will get into ownership, but that may not happen, at least not until I've read all there is to read, sussed out the finances and made an informed decision.
It is good to hear that there is good, friendly support available through the FCCUK site. The trouble is it would appear that you have to join, at a cost of £15, to access the forums, including buying guide information. I have no problem paying that if I know I will get into ownership, but that may not happen, at least not until I've read all there is to read, sussed out the finances and made an informed decision.
pstruck said:
Argh, I'm still here and reading every post with interest. I want one of these and am sat here wondering whether they are a viable proposition for a second, weekend fun car. If I could pick up a really good, well looked after example, just how much would it cost me to own and run on this basis?
It is good to hear that there is good, friendly support available through the FCCUK site. The trouble is it would appear that you have to join, at a cost of £15, to access the forums, including buying guide information. I have no problem paying that if I know I will get into ownership, but that may not happen, at least not until I've read all there is to read, sussed out the finances and made an informed decision.
Joe who owns http://www.fiatcoupespecialist.com/ is a great guy to talk to regarding all things Fiat Coupe.....It is good to hear that there is good, friendly support available through the FCCUK site. The trouble is it would appear that you have to join, at a cost of £15, to access the forums, including buying guide information. I have no problem paying that if I know I will get into ownership, but that may not happen, at least not until I've read all there is to read, sussed out the finances and made an informed decision.
pstruck said:
It is good to hear that there is good, friendly support available through the FCCUK site. The trouble is it would appear that you have to join, at a cost of £15, to access the forums, including buying guide information. I have no problem paying that if I know I will get into ownership, but that may not happen, at least not until I've read all there is to read, sussed out the finances and made an informed decision.
No need to pay. Just need to sign up to the Forum.Welshbeef said:
J4CKO said:
I remember when I had mine being told by someone that the road test cars had been messed with to get the 14.5 seconds to 100, anyone else heard this ?
Given the countless standard cars hitting those times at the drag strip it's genuine. I want a go in Nigels car, sounds epic, 450 bhp through the front wheels
BrewsterBear said:
Recently, it was especially pleasing to see the last of the bad apples of the old club board being forced to relinquish their moderator status following yet another conflict of interest between himself and the forum.
And it goes to show that as usual, you know the square root of f*** allNigel_O said:
BrewsterBear said:
Recently, it was especially pleasing to see the last of the bad apples of the old club board being forced to relinquish their moderator status following yet another conflict of interest between himself and the forum.
And it goes to show that as usual, you know the square root of f*** all
Andy20vt said:
Perfectly viable as a second car. Might even be able to get classic insurance policy with limited mileage allowance now too. Coupe is surprisingly practical. Decent boot, plenty of space for 4 adults. When buying you can go either of two routes:
Buy a cheap Coupe for around £1,000 - £1,500. It's likely though at this price range that some major work will need doing. Probably will be a little untidy and rough around the edges with poor or incomplete service history. Budget a further £1,000 - £3,000 to put right all the issues with these budget cars (depending on how picky you are and what you can live with).
Alternatively buy a more expensive Coupe £2,500 - £4,500) and the car should have full specialist service history, need nothing or very little doing to it and should remain reliable. This is the route I'd go by the way. Generally the more you pay for the car in the first place, then the less it will cost you to maintain in the long run. Plus a good original car with full history will always be worth more when you come to sell it again.
Another note too - buy on condition - not mileage (there are some low mileage sheds out there). Look out for an owner that has had their car maintained at a specialist and one who has checked the oil on a regular basis (low oil is the number one cause of engine failures with Coupes - otherwise the 5cyl engines are bulletproof). Contrary to what most people think, Fiat Coupes are surprisingly well built and reliable - but they do like regular TLC to keep them in tip top shape. A neglected car will probably be a money pit but a well looked after car should need little apart from routine servicing.
As far as servicing goes, most owners seem to budget about £1,000 a year for maintainence. But that's with a car in regular use. Could be a little less if it's a weekend toy only. Cambelt (if needed) should cost £450 tops at a specialist and it's no longer an engine out job.
Sign up to the FCCUK Forum. There's everything you could possible want to know on there.
£1000 per year to run the car as in servicing and preventative maintenance??? WTFBuy a cheap Coupe for around £1,000 - £1,500. It's likely though at this price range that some major work will need doing. Probably will be a little untidy and rough around the edges with poor or incomplete service history. Budget a further £1,000 - £3,000 to put right all the issues with these budget cars (depending on how picky you are and what you can live with).
Alternatively buy a more expensive Coupe £2,500 - £4,500) and the car should have full specialist service history, need nothing or very little doing to it and should remain reliable. This is the route I'd go by the way. Generally the more you pay for the car in the first place, then the less it will cost you to maintain in the long run. Plus a good original car with full history will always be worth more when you come to sell it again.
Another note too - buy on condition - not mileage (there are some low mileage sheds out there). Look out for an owner that has had their car maintained at a specialist and one who has checked the oil on a regular basis (low oil is the number one cause of engine failures with Coupes - otherwise the 5cyl engines are bulletproof). Contrary to what most people think, Fiat Coupes are surprisingly well built and reliable - but they do like regular TLC to keep them in tip top shape. A neglected car will probably be a money pit but a well looked after car should need little apart from routine servicing.
As far as servicing goes, most owners seem to budget about £1,000 a year for maintainence. But that's with a car in regular use. Could be a little less if it's a weekend toy only. Cambelt (if needed) should cost £450 tops at a specialist and it's no longer an engine out job.
Sign up to the FCCUK Forum. There's everything you could possible want to know on there.
That isn't the case at all
Cambelt once every 60k miles or 4 years for £400 so £100 pa
Tyres depends how you drive and if you go for quality or crap some get 6k out of the fronts others get 35k and tyres are cheap even using Michellin Pilot sport 3's all round
Discs and pads would be pads every two years discs every four years use dependant. But rear discs are £20 front brembo discs £60. I know I bought them.
Clutch mine was 12 years old original clutch and maybe getting high on biting point £350 in any case
So even with the big ticket items how do you get to £1k it's miles off and if £1k is the general view of budgeting for the car servicing then I'd flag up so would a GTi or anything with a rubber non chain cambelt.
£1k would scare the shot out of me on a £6k car which mine was at the time let alone a £2k example. I spent roughly £180 per year all in from memory - check my garage for the full details if you like.
Welshbeef said:
£1000 per year to run the car as in servicing and preventative maintenance??? WTF
That isn't the case at all
It doesn't take many failed turbos, rotted exhausts, cracked manifolds, knackered wishbones, worn trailing arm bearings, duff coils, noisy rear wheel bearings, knackered handbrake cables, rotten oil coolers etc. to push up the annual maintenance budget by quite a lot, especially if you pay someone to fix these things. On an old 20VT it would be very sensible to budget £1k pa because the bigger problems are going to raise their head at some stage.That isn't the case at all
Mr2Mike said:
It doesn't take many failed turbos, rotted exhausts, cracked manifolds, knackered wishbones, worn trailing arm bearings, duff coils, noisy rear wheel bearings, knackered handbrake cables, rotten oil coolers etc. to push up the annual maintenance budget by quite a lot, especially if you pay someone to fix these things. On an old 20VT it would be very sensible to budget £1k pa because the bigger problems are going to raise their head at some stage.
Handbrake cables fitted was £35 when I changed mine paid someone to do it. Exhaust - the original one on mine lasted for 12 years with only the rear section rotten a new one was £180 so that's not a lot and not very often.
I think the oil cooler is about £200 but if the original is 15 years old again if it needs changing then it's not a frequent change.
Failed turbos this is all down to keep checking oil levels and changing oil at 6k miles and letting the engine cool down on last few miles so the oil doesn't cook in the turbo. But if it does it's £500 exchange item and again 15 years old it's not a service item replace if it fails.
As for wheel bearings etc I'd recommend buying one with that all done or negotiate that off the price and then get it done will transform the car.
So if all that lot fails then you either bought it knowing that it's shot and needs doing or you bought a pup. However if you did either of those two ten get them fixed (or sell the car and buy one with it all done) then the car would be dead cheap to run year in year out.
£1k a year is e46 M3 budget pa.
Frankly if your budgeting to spend £1k on a car worth £1.5k why bother? Run it until it breaks then either scrap it ad buy another or assess the repair cost.
Welshbeef said:
Mr2Mike said:
It doesn't take many failed turbos, rotted exhausts, cracked manifolds, knackered wishbones, worn trailing arm bearings, duff coils, noisy rear wheel bearings, knackered handbrake cables, rotten oil coolers etc. to push up the annual maintenance budget by quite a lot, especially if you pay someone to fix these things. On an old 20VT it would be very sensible to budget £1k pa because the bigger problems are going to raise their head at some stage.
Handbrake cables fitted was £35 when I changed mine paid someone to do it. Exhaust - the original one on mine lasted for 12 years with only the rear section rotten a new one was £180 so that's not a lot and not very often.
I think the oil cooler is about £200 but if the original is 15 years old again if it needs changing then it's not a frequent change.
Failed turbos this is all down to keep checking oil levels and changing oil at 6k miles and letting the engine cool down on last few miles so the oil doesn't cook in the turbo. But if it does it's £500 exchange item and again 15 years old it's not a service item replace if it fails.
As for wheel bearings etc I'd recommend buying one with that all done or negotiate that off the price and then get it done will transform the car.
So if all that lot fails then you either bought it knowing that it's shot and needs doing or you bought a pup. However if you did either of those two ten get them fixed (or sell the car and buy one with it all done) then the car would be dead cheap to run year in year out.
£1k a year is e46 M3 budget pa.
Frankly if your budgeting to spend £1k on a car worth £1.5k why bother? Run it until it breaks then either scrap it ad buy another or assess the repair cost.
I never had the miss-fortune of dipping my hand in my pocket for a problematic 20VT. That included buying a chipped £1500 snotter with 160k miles. Went like stink, never used a drop of oil & sold it for what I paid for it.
They were both the most reliable cars I've owned.
But as said by MR2 Mike, the main things to go are oil cooler & pipes, manifold & clutches. Make sure these are tip top & also that the cam belt isn't needed for at least 12 months & go enjoy a Coupe.
Brilliant cars. I would love another Portofino blue 20VT at some point.
I've got one of the last ones to roll off the production line (the last batch of 20VT "Plus" models out of Pininfarina were all sent to Malaysia). As a young 'un living in the UK a decade ago, this was the first "fast" car I'd ever owned, and I still have a soft spot for these things. So I bought one a year ago as a bit of fun and to rekindle the love (though they are much more expensive here than in the UK - paid £15k for mine). It has been problem free, and at 30k miles, still feels fresh.
With choice suspension mods, it swings round corners shockingly better than the standard car, but only reliably eats up flowing second-gear turns. Go into a zig-zag series of tighter first-gear bends and it's mad understeer mania! Still good fun though.
Just last week I took it out for an out-of-town jaunt and ended up befriending an R8 on the motorway. We spent over an hour doing a minimum of 100 with the occasional spurt up to 140ish when conditions allowed (the legalities are not much of a problem here in Malaysia). I worked my car as hard as I could to keep up with him (and of course he was just mildly coaxing his) but for the most part we stuck together and everything else that tried to join in got quickly left behind. As we parted ways the R8 driver gave me a thumbs up, which was a fantastic pat on the back for the old Fiat.
I don't drive it very much these days, but it's still quite special every time I do. It's not the fastest, best looking or the most practical car, but the combination of that creamy take-me-to-the-red noise, some fun turbo lag, great mid-range torque and unique shell (young boys point at it, which surely is the clearest definition of what a pretty car is) makes it a tough one to beat at almost any price, let alone at SOTW-zone.
A classic in my book.
With choice suspension mods, it swings round corners shockingly better than the standard car, but only reliably eats up flowing second-gear turns. Go into a zig-zag series of tighter first-gear bends and it's mad understeer mania! Still good fun though.
Just last week I took it out for an out-of-town jaunt and ended up befriending an R8 on the motorway. We spent over an hour doing a minimum of 100 with the occasional spurt up to 140ish when conditions allowed (the legalities are not much of a problem here in Malaysia). I worked my car as hard as I could to keep up with him (and of course he was just mildly coaxing his) but for the most part we stuck together and everything else that tried to join in got quickly left behind. As we parted ways the R8 driver gave me a thumbs up, which was a fantastic pat on the back for the old Fiat.
I don't drive it very much these days, but it's still quite special every time I do. It's not the fastest, best looking or the most practical car, but the combination of that creamy take-me-to-the-red noise, some fun turbo lag, great mid-range torque and unique shell (young boys point at it, which surely is the clearest definition of what a pretty car is) makes it a tough one to beat at almost any price, let alone at SOTW-zone.
A classic in my book.
Welshbeef said:
Handbrake cables fitted was £35 when I changed mine paid someone to do it.
If you use the after market parts which are well known to be crap. The Fiat parts cost way over that before fitting.Welshbeef said:
Exhaust - the original one on mine lasted for 12 years with only the rear section rotten a new one was £180 so that's not a lot and not very often.
12 years is very good, but does mean there are bound to be a lot around needing replacement by now.Welshbeef said:
I think the oil cooler is about £200 but if the original is 15 years old again if it needs changing then it's not a frequent change.
The oil cooler is about £200, but then you need the pipes as well. It's not a frequent, but not a cheap one either.Welshbeef said:
Failed turbos this is all down to keep checking oil levels and changing oil at 6k miles and letting the engine cool down on last few miles so the oil doesn't cook in the turbo. But if it does it's £500 exchange item and again 15 years old it's not a service item replace if it fails.
They all fail eventually, the length of time this takes does depend on how well it's looked after. Plenty on the forum have had more than one turbo replaced.Welshbeef said:
As for wheel bearings etc I'd recommend buying one with that all done or negotiate that off the price and then get it done will transform the car.
Yes, but they can still fail. Wishbones in particular are virtualy a service item.Welshbeef said:
Frankly if your budgeting to spend £1k on a car worth £1.5k why bother? Run it until it breaks then either scrap it ad buy another or assess the repair cost.
I explained the utter fallacy of this in another thread, but I agree that buying the best you can afford is the best idea.All the the things in this list (you omitted the very expensive exhaust manifold BTW) are things that are well known to fail at some time on the coupe, all of them will have to have these things at some stage and you can't guarantee how long they will last even if they seem ok on a s/h example. Obviously they are unlikely to all fail within a year, but chances are at least one or two of them are going to crop up so you need the budget to deal with them.
Forgot to add the coolant hose of death and thermostats, another pair of items that are always cropping up on the forum.
I'm not trying to say they are hideously unreliable, mine has been excellent but only due to a lot of preventative maintenance which hasn't been particularly cheap. Given the purchase price these cars are not cheap to look after properly.
Spending more on a coupe is no guarantee it will be any good, learning about them, going on the forum and asking questions and the seeing a few are the best way to get a good one, I did my learnign after I bought mine, too my cost. There will be crap ones at four grand and decent ones at £1500, some people undervalue to get shut and then you get people who think they have a "Pristine example" that is actually just polished.
They arent that complex in the scheme of things and not that much more risky a purchase than a lot of modern diesels which have DPF issues and spit injectors out at £300 each, but nobody seems to register that when buying a three grand Mondeo diesel, it can still have a good go at bankrupting you. My coupe was pampered but still went tits up, knew a lad where I work who also had a tuned Skyline had one as a daily that he battered mercilessly and it never missed a beat until he had a spectacular crash in it, in which it protected him very well apparently.
They arent that complex in the scheme of things and not that much more risky a purchase than a lot of modern diesels which have DPF issues and spit injectors out at £300 each, but nobody seems to register that when buying a three grand Mondeo diesel, it can still have a good go at bankrupting you. My coupe was pampered but still went tits up, knew a lad where I work who also had a tuned Skyline had one as a daily that he battered mercilessly and it never missed a beat until he had a spectacular crash in it, in which it protected him very well apparently.
I've known Coupes that have taken nothing but cheap(ish) routine maintenance to keep them running properly for many years. With the current crop of highly-regarded Coupe specialists (FCSS in Herefordshire, Power Italia in Essex, Midland Car Servicing in Leicestershire, L&M International in High Wycombe and my chosen mechanic, Motormech in Birmingham), there's absolutely no reason why a Coupe should be any more expensive to run and maintain than any other car. In some respects, due to the collective knowledge of the Coupe community, accurate and considered preventative maintenance and diagnosis of issues means it can actually be far cheaper than a mundane euro-box.
However, at the other extreme, I've also known Coupes (usually modified) that have been spectacularly unlucky and have required multiple engine rebuilds.
One of the most damaging issues is a tendency for the auxilliary belt to jump off the pulleys when the throttle is lifted at very high revs. Clearly, the belt then has only two ways to go - harmlessly off the outside of the pulley into the engine bay, or off the inside and into the cambelt area. The latter almost always leads to a jumped or failed cambelt with predictable consequences.
Depsite (or maybe because of) the monumental miles I'm doing on my Coupes, I've yet to suffer this failure, but a select(?) band of owners have been hit two, three or even more times.
Barbz, a well-regarded tuner has developed a modified aux belt pulley that appears to have solved the problem, so if any owners are considering spending cash on their engines, a few quid on a modded pulley is probably a very useful insurance policy.
So - as with any car, the Coupe can be a bargain or a money pit. As with any car, but particularly 12+ year old Italian sporty cars, buy on history and mechanical condition, not mileage and shiny paint.
However, at the other extreme, I've also known Coupes (usually modified) that have been spectacularly unlucky and have required multiple engine rebuilds.
One of the most damaging issues is a tendency for the auxilliary belt to jump off the pulleys when the throttle is lifted at very high revs. Clearly, the belt then has only two ways to go - harmlessly off the outside of the pulley into the engine bay, or off the inside and into the cambelt area. The latter almost always leads to a jumped or failed cambelt with predictable consequences.
Depsite (or maybe because of) the monumental miles I'm doing on my Coupes, I've yet to suffer this failure, but a select(?) band of owners have been hit two, three or even more times.
Barbz, a well-regarded tuner has developed a modified aux belt pulley that appears to have solved the problem, so if any owners are considering spending cash on their engines, a few quid on a modded pulley is probably a very useful insurance policy.
So - as with any car, the Coupe can be a bargain or a money pit. As with any car, but particularly 12+ year old Italian sporty cars, buy on history and mechanical condition, not mileage and shiny paint.
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