History
This car is believed to be one of only seven cars imported in Australia in 1950 and first shown at the 1951 Adelaide Motor show. The car was very upmarket for the day; being sold with a standard built in valve radio as an example. It was Fiat’s first unitary constructed body which boasted four speed gear box, hydraulic brakes, ventilated aluminium drum brakes, anti-roll bars, traffic indicators and an inner lined folding roof with centre dome light to name a few! It later became Fiat’s first car with a diesel engine.
Following its debut to the Australian market, the car was deemed to be too expensive for our local consumption. The seven RHD cars were sold off and no further cars were imported except for the four-door version which was less lavish but much cheaper and price competitive.
Of the seven original cars, it would appear that only two have survived; this one and a sister car in unrestored condition in Victoria.
This car was first owned by Mr Geoffrey Dutton, a sheep farmer in Outback South Australia and sold off at auction in Adelaide in 1998 before coming to Queensland where it remained in my care for the next 14 years. The car spent a total of 11 years as a registered car in South Australia and covered a total of 81 000 miles in that time. During this period, the car travelled as far as Alice Springs and mainly on corrugated outback roads. Not exactly built for the rugged Australian conditions, the car suffered several “bush repairs” and any broken metric fastener was always replaced by an imperial cousin. Needless to say, the body was not in pristine conditions when I got it but on the main it was complete!
A total ground up restoration on the project began in 2012 and took ten years to complete. The restoration journey took far longer than anticipated and all projected budgets by the end of 2022 had become a distant memory!
