Craigslist Crapshoot

Welcome to Craigslist Crapshoot, our weekly search for the most bizarre, awesome, and/or terrible vehicles that the online classifieds has to offer.  Fun fact, FIAT stands for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, and not, as many of us believed Fix It Again, Tony. Yeah I know, you already knew that, and now I know that when it comes to finding awesome Fiat X1/9s in the classifieds you also know what you’re doing. We’ll see if X marks the spot in a sec, but first let’s AM our G spots. AMG was once an independent tuner, but is today the in-house band for Mercedes Benz, creating cars that go toe to tire with BMW’s equally muscle imbued M-series of cars. I think that the Bimmers get most of the glory, leaving AMG to bask in that competitor’s shadow. That’s why this week I want us to find some awesome deals on AMG-zed Benzes. Let’s see if we can find the best deal out there – the best performance, and desirability, at the lowest (or at least seemingly best value) price we can. As always, we want your finds to go down in infamy and not in the site’s spam filter. Since we’ve changed commenting systems, you may need to update your commenter account. Make sure you have a Disqus account – they’re free and easy to get – and then comment away.

I think that the most important take-away from last week’s Fiat-fest was that it’s not a question of if an X1/9 will rust but when. That when might just have started before the car even left the factory. Yes, rust loomed large in most of the ads for Fiat’s fantastic little mid-engine sportster, and its extent seemed to affect asking prices proportionally. Those which have not yet exhibited significant issues with the tin worm commanded the highest asking prices – cars like this handsome merlot edition found by Jofes2, and this one with silver surfer seat covers located by I_Borgward. Others seemed less Italian and more Swiss – as in cheese – as they evidenced significant reductions in weight and possibly structural integrity as oxidization took its toll. A fine example of that was found by Andrew_theS2kBore, while another came from Manic_King. The most notable find of last week was neither rusty nor truely a Fiat X1/9. It was instead a pretender that looks like an X1/9 and which was built in Brazil back in the late ’70s/early ’80s. This Fiat Dardo (Italian for Dart) is mostly fiberglass, and sports an X1/9-esque body and a dash out of a Fiat Uno. They were built by Corona S. S. Viatura e Equipamento in São Paulo and are based on the X1/9. This one comes with the larger 1.5-litre mill, asks $32,000 Brazilian, and was found, unsurprisingly, by BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ. Congrats to all for such a varied and – as pointed out by Jeepster – varied wheeled collection of X1/9s, and especially to BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ for finding something I’ll bet few of us ever even knew existed.