The Carchive: Fiat Barchetta

Welcome to our first opportunity this week to freefall into the bottomless chasm of crap that is The Carchive.

All things being equal and providing I’ve clicked the right radio buttons and generally not SNAFU’d all over the place, today’s Hooniverse menu should have been absolutely chock-full of Motorboat Monday themed posts. So as not to have to go completely cold turkey on boats as we revert our gaze back towards wheeled transportation, let’s have a look at Fiat’s Little Boat.

“The design brief for the new Fiat Barchetta was simple. To bring back all the style and fun of a ’60s sports car using the technology of the 90’s. Just how brilliantly the Barchetta succeeds, you can see for yourself”

It’s a lovely little car. For more insight into the design process, follow this link to the fantastic fiatbarchetta.com. There are a couple of little niggles that I’ve never been 100% happy with, namely the shape of the headlamps and the rather non-expressive grille, but who am I to have any opinion at all?

The shape was glorious. The proportions did indeed hark back to a time before massive wheels, slitty slithers of glass and muscular haunches were de rigeur. Side on, roof up or down, or from the rear three quarters the little boat (The near-as-dammit translation of Barchetta) achieved that design brief with rare accuracy. At least in terms of style, anyway. And those mock-Campagnola steel wheels were niiice.

As a driver’s car, well, the fun was still there, but not in the way you might expect. The car sat on the same underpinnings as the Fiat Punto hatchback, a Geo Metro sized small car in the popular European fashion, which meant front wheel drive. Fortunately, the Punto was naturally quite fun to punt around, and the Barchetta no less so. Plus of course, in the new car you sat that much closer to the ground than in the Punto, in a driving position that was half way between that car and, say, a 124 Spyder. You had plenty of grip and, thanks to a 1.8 litre 16v engine spinning out 130hp, enough grunt to shift the 2300lb cutie-pie with some verve. No rear drive histrionics, but that’s not everything, is it?

“Inside the award-winning interior, the 60s theme continues with body-coloured metal framing the dashboard”

It was a nice place to be. As you’ve probably seen if you followed the link, which you really should, you’ll have seen the journey that was undertaken before they arrived at the final product. A lot of thought was put into it and, though it wasn’t actually, really, in any way redolent of the ’60s, it was at least sufficiently different to set it apart and create a feeling of specialness. Exposed metal on vehicle interiors is cool, although one of the original sketches showed painted metal covering the instrument binnacle in such a sharp, pointy way that, if you ever had cause to take advantage of the airbag, your nicely cushioned head might well have been sliced clean off and presented to the driver behind anyway.

“As an optional extra, the Barchetta is available with a complete set of tailored luggage”

Just as well, really. The Fiat Punto wasn’t known as one of the all-time greatest utility vehicles and putting a lithe, low bodyshell on the same underpinnings wasn’t a recipe for load-lugging super fun happy times. Tailored luggage, though. That’s cool. That’s like what Ferraris have. That means the Fiat Barchetta is a bit like the Ferrari Barchetta. I really want one now.

“You don’t have to go to Italy to discover the thrill of owning and driving a car built by people with performance in their blood. because the superb left-hand drive Barchetta is available in Britain too”

It was nice of Fiat to bring the Barchetta over here, even though its not as if they had to put any effort into it whatsoever. They didn’t even make the effort to put the steering wheel on the wrong side where it belongs. But they did go to the trouble of putting Barchettas onto the same boat that they were already making frequent deliveries to Britain with anyway, and it’s thanks to that that British drivers can now find Barchettas on eBay for surprisingly few quid. Few enough for Top Gear to get one and allow Richard Hammond to smash it up in the name of entertainment.

(Disclaimer: Images are of original manufacturer publicity material, photographed by me. Copyright remains property of Fiat S.p.A, who have offered us absolutely nothing like the Barchetta since 2005 and really, really need to get their act together and stop it with all the 500s in different colours and sizes.)