The greatest FIAT of all time ?

[SCWP1]

The FIAT Otto Vu.

I say yes ! ( especially if you include the Zagato racing version - I'll have to find my pics of that model )


Enjoy !

http://home.comcast.net/~sc_walker/c...s/fiat/8v.html

Best regards,

Steven

[Wouter Melissen]

I agree. We should redo the 8V on the site. Since there is no good book out on this model, I played with the idea of writing it.

[Wouter Melissen]

some shots from last year

[whiteballz]

beautiful!

[Spastik_Roach]

Looks like a Ferrari (which is a very, very good thing )

[Mustang]

very nice car, didnt ferrari own fiat or something like that arround the time that the 8V was eing made?? isnt that why it looks so much like a ferrari ??

[Wouter Melissen]

Ferrari and Fiat were fully independent from eachother up until the 1970s. This is just what 1950s GTs looked like. Ferrari's from the early 1950s actually didn't look much like these Zagato 8Vs.

[Mustang]

Ferrari and Fiat were fully independent from eachother up until the 1970s. This is just what 1950s GTs looked like. Ferrari's from the early 1950s actually didn't look much like these Zagato 8Vs.

ok i just knew that ferrari had something to do with fiat but i wasnt sure what coz i am not that much of a fiat fan and also dont think that ferraris are that amazing.

[Alcomet]

Wouter: Is the RED one a Zagato too??? because I don't see the 2 humps on the roof like the SILVER one have !? Isn't It one of the features of a Zagato bodywork ?

[cuntukimushroom]

thats a cool fiat i like alot

[Wouter Melissen]

Wouter: Is the RED one a Zagato too??? because I don't see the 2 humps on the roof like the SILVER one have !? Isn't It one of the features of a Zagato bodywork ?

Both are Zagatos, the red one is a complete Zagato body and the silver one is a modification of the original body. The humps were then not yet a trademark of Zagato's. They were conceived to have the roof as low as possible.

[Alcomet]

Wouter: Ohh, didn't know .... thank you!!! I love the details in cars

[stratos]

that fiat is prety cool but i still prefer the fiat 124 sport coupe ( because i already ride on one )

[SCWP1]

The Ex-Elio Zagato FIAT 8V Zagato Competition Berlinetta

"The most important supplier of alternative bodywork for the 8V was Carozzeria Zagato. Zagato bought 32 complete 8V chassis from Fiat; four of those already had some portions of the original bodywork installed. These were modified with an aluminum roof and revised windows which were appended to the face-lifted lower steel bodywork. The cars which received this treatment became known as "Elaborata Zagato".

Zagato fit 28 Fiat 8V chassis with completely new bodywork. All of them featured lightweight aluminum bodies. Most featured Zagato's design trademark: the "double-bubble" roof: the roof surface has two "humps", one above the driver's and one above the passenger's head. It was optional and more or less a gimmick, but also gave some extended head room and the construction was a bit lighter and more rigid. These cars were often used in competition and were quite successful in road races like the Targa Florio and the Mille Miglia."




"With each new body for the 8V Zagato modified the styling. The aluminum 8V berlinetta is quite a contrast to the 1952 Elaborata model. It still features the double-bubble roofline but is altogether far less bulgy. This is a simple, effective and crisp design. Competition racing models only distinguished themselves from road cars by the lack of a heater and aluminum bumpers. Elio Zagato raced these cars himself and this design was his favorite of all Zagato designs. He won a number of races in lightweight 8V Zagato berlinettas and he said in an interview that the 8V had never failed him. Fiat 8V cars were competitive in races until the end of the 1950s. An 8V berlinetta Zagato won its class in the (last) 1957 Mille Miglia for instance, with an average speed of 122.7 kph.". Andre Ritzinger



"I sometimes ask myself if my racing career would have given me so much satisfaction without the Fiat Otto Vu. Perhaps not. This car gave me everything. I've made no secret of the fact that of all our Zagatos, this one seemed the most beautiful." "My opinion is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that I took part in the most exciting races driving this car. It never let me down and at the flag I always came in ahead of the others." Elio Zagato

Photos: Steven Walker 2003
Event: The Best of France and Italy, Van Nuys, CA ~ Nov. 2, 2003
Car: 1955 FIAT 8V Zagato Competition Berlinetta
Owner: David Sydorick
Text: Andre Ritzinger http://www.ritzsite.net/Fiat_8V/01_Fiat8V.htm

[Bravawatch]

Absolutely gorgeous cars, Stephen. But my nomination for the greatest Fiat of all time goes to Mephistopheles



Fiat Mephistopheles
21,714cc A-12 BIS aircraft engine. 6 cylinders
chain drive, power output 300 bhp at 1,400rpm
Fiat Centro Storico, Turin, Italy

In action, the Fiat was so diabolical that press observers dubbed it Mephistopheles, which sounds suitably operatic in its Italian form of Mefistofele. In fact, that identity has tended to be back-dated to its pre-nickname days.

It began life as a 1908 chain-driven Grand Prix car, using an engine of no less than 18 litres, with two individual but linked-together cylinder blocks. By 1922 it had come into the hands of John Duff, who was racing it at Brooklands when he became the innocent party in one of the biggest blow-ups ever recorded in the entire history of motorsport. One of the cylinder blocks exploded, separated itself from the rest of the engine, and departed skywards, taking the bonnet and several other supplementary components with it.

Duff rather lost interest in the car after that, and went off instead to help start Bentley's winning run at Le Mans.

The shattered remains of the Fiat were taken over by that amazing character Ernest Eldridge. He looked at the 18-litre engine and came to the conclusion that it was a little on the small side. It certainly was, in comparison with his current Isotta-Maybach, which had a 20.5-litre Maybach engine insinuated into an extended 1907 Isotta-Fraschini chassis.

Creating A Record-Breaker

Eldridge managed to acquire a 21.7-litre six-cylinder Fiat airship engine, but was then obliged to lengthen Mephistopheles to accommodate it. The story goes that elements of a London bus chassis were used in the conversion.

The rebuilt car was no crude job, though. It was given rather elegant new bodywork with a shapely tail, and it had the centre line of the front wheels farther ahead of the radiator than any other record car of its day. Eldridge had also breathed on the engine, which, modified with four valves per cylinder, gave a full 320bhp. Still chain-drive, of course, and no front brakes.

In July 1924, two teams converged on Arpajon. One was the factory Delage outfit, for whom René Thomas was the driver, although one Fiat historian got rather mixed-up at this point and went into print with the story that it was the Welshman Parry Thomas, whose LSR achievements were still to come.

On other occasions, high on the Brooklands banking, Mephistopheles was a devil to control. On the straight road at Arpajon, it was still a major handful. But Eldridge was up to the job. One journalist described the car as "a terrifying sight" as it hurtled past, needing all the driver's considerable strength to keep it under control, snaking from one side of the road to the other. Eldridge didn't lift, though, (he never lifted) and went faster than the existing Land Speed Record with a two-way average of 143.26mph.

Then the Delage team protested that the Fiat was unable to reverse. In fact, it didn't have the reverse gear insisted on by the regulations. The time set by Mephistopheles wasn't ratified. Eldridge took it away to a workshop in Paris, while Thomas, still at Arpajon, worked the V12 Delage up to 143.309mph and snatched the official record. The Delage was taken to the company's main Paris showroom in the Champs Elysées, and put on proud display.

Eldridge went back to Arpajon, with Mephistopheles having been given some arcane mechanism which would move it, however briefly and convulsively, backwards, although Mick Walsh has pointed out in a recent article that there's no sign of a reverse gear on the car today.

With his passenger/mechanic John Ames - a man whose nerves must have been as steely as his own - pumping up the fuel pressure, Eldridge gave it the works. Mephistopheles was once again using the whole width of the road, verge to verge, but it was going faster than ever, and took the record from the Delage at an average of 146.013mph over the flying kilometre.

Then, as Mick Walsh has recalled, it was said to have been taken to Paris and parked, in a pointed manner, across the road from the Delage showrooms.

Mephistopheles later raced in other hands, to nothing like the same effect. It was eventually bought by Fiat, which keeps it in its own museum and is sending it across to Goodwood. There, for the first time since 1924, it will be reunited with its old rival, the René Thomas Delage: two impressively restored cars which held the World Land Speed Record in the same week.

[by Ross Finlay, carkeys.co.uk]