On 2/3/2013 5:35 PM, SteveH wrote:
> charlie > wrote:
>
>> Or, based upon Fiat's past reputation, a real disaster!
>> One of the worst cars I've ever driven was a Spanish "copy" of a Fiat,
>> known as a Siat. Manual gearshift on the dash, no less!
>> For a company located in a coastal country, the old Fiats sure rusted
>> out in a hurry!
>
> Nice uninformed ********, then.
>
> Fiat owned Seat at the time, so they mostly produced Seat badged small
> Fiats. Column shift was quite common across many manufacturers in the
> 50s and 60s and all cars used to rust rampantly back then.
>
> But other than that - great post!
>
This was in 1979-80, not 50-60s, and a fairly new Seat rental car on
Majorca.
We drove rental Opel's and Mercedes in Germany, Holland, Luxembourg,
Belgium and France. The Seat was not a column or floor shift, it had a
shifter sticking out of the center of the dash! (Manual, not Auto)
One of our ex neighbors, a woman, had a Fiat (Spider?) that mechanically
was in VGC, but the body was rusting
from the inside out.

The worst case of rust I ever saw was my father in law's 71 GMC
HD pickup. The body was lace in five years.
He, some years before, drove a Rambler to work until it just gave out in
the driveway. The car rusted until the middle literally sagged
down to the pavement. That's the Chicago area for you.