From the Archive: 1979 Fiat X1/9 Tested

From the June 1979 issue of Car and Driver.

Wall Street’s investment advisers are sounding the inflation warnings again. They’re telling us to dig in, forget our passbook savings accounts, put our money in something that will ride the crest of inflation like a surfer hanging ten at Malibu. They tout Krugerrands and South African gold-mining stocks and platinum futures. They say people are making it big in Louis XVI roll-top desks and colonial-American stamp col­lections and hand-carved Eskimo walrus tusks. So why have they completely overlooked Fiat’s X1/9?

Fiat X1/9s are the high fliers of the car equities. Your stock portfolio should do so well. The last example we tested, at the start of the 1978 model year, list­ed for $5195. The following May it jumped to $5545, then closed out the year at $5700. The opening quote for 1979 was $6690 and just recently that has been revised upward, to $7115. That’s a rise of $1920, a juicy 37 per­cent appreciation, in the space of one and a half model years. And it will prob­ably go higher.

We hate to mouth the same lines used by investment advisers, but sometimes it’s appropriate. So here goes. We thought the X1/9 was a good value at $5195 and we continue to recommend it for fun-oriented accounts seeking a maximum of style and agility with a minimum of fuel cost. This model has cornered the ultrasophisticated branch of the small-sports-car market, and we see nothing on the horizon that will give it any competition. In other words, the X1/9 is the only game in town. If you want it, you’ll have to pay the going rate. It’s a seller’s market.

We realize that a base price of $7115 is enough to make a lot of people’s checkbooks suck air. But then $5545 seemed like a big number a year ago. Now we’re all kicking ourselves for not buying sooner.

Those who gritted their teeth those 1570 short dollars ago and signed the order forms are ahead of the game now, riding that inflation wave just as the Wall Streeters recommend. First, they have the nifty little sports car they want­ed, and, second, the rise in the new­-model price has given them a solid hedge against depreciation.

Depreciation is by far the largest cost of new-car ownership (with the possible exception of insurance if you’re really young or if your driving record is be­coming a legend). The usual driver is hard-pressed to use more than $400 worth of gasoline a year; the average de­preciation for the first several years can easily be twice that.

Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of a high flier like the X1/9. The rapid rise in the price of the new model automati­cally lifts the value of good used ones. A 1977 or an early-1978 X1/9 should still bring relatively close to what it sold for new, certainly much closer than the general run of cars of the same age. This is not to say that this sporty Fiat is the only automobile to enjoy such an anti-depreciation feature. Most special-­interest cars, particularly those of Ger­man origin, have had the same protection in the last five years, a time when certain foreign currencies (notably the d-mark) were rising rapidly with respect to the dollar. Nonetheless, such a price trend has in fact made the X1/9 a cheaper car to own than its swelling new-car price would at first suggest.

One more caveat. Wall Streeters know well the fickle nature of trends and how suicidal it can be to assume that the future will continue the pattern of the past. So a word to the wise here. Don’t buy an X1/9 solely on some nth-­order extrapolation of past perform­ance. Buy it because you like it. There’s very little risk that way.

Particularly when it’s even easier to like the 1979 model than those which have gone before. The X1/9 has more improvements this year than at any time since its introduction in 1974. The best news is the enlarged engine, 1498cc and 67 horsepower (66 in California), up 208cc and 6 horsepower from last year. As you probably suspect, this power­plant is borrowed from the new Strada sedan. It’s still an in-line four-cylinder with an aluminum cylinder head and a belt-driven overhead camshaft, but the stroke has been increased to 63.9mm from 55.5mm. Apparently, there has been a slight increase in the overall height of the powerplant too, because the engine cover has been raised slight­ly for more clearance. Breakerless igni­tion is now standard equipment, and for the first time there is a catalytic convert­er for exhaust cleanup.

Naturally, along with the Strada en­gine comes the Strada gearbox, a slick little five-speeder to replace the old four-speed. The ratios in first, second, and third are identical to those of the old model, but fourth in the new one is a bit closer to third, and fifth is added as an overdrive. Beyond this, the final-drive ratio is reduced to 4.08 from 4.42.

The result of the new engine and gearbox is very pleasant indeed: finally, the X1/9 has torque. Step on the accel­erator at 2500 rpm, even in fifth, and something happens. The engine is much more flexible. You needn’t keep shuffling through the gearbox for a more favorable ratio every time you see an opening in traffic. The engine has brawn to it now and it pulls noticeably stronger.

Moreover, the pace of the car is dif­ferent—slower, more relaxed. You had to buzz the old one to keep it moving, but the new one has enough energy that most in-traffic thrusts can be made one gear higher and the long final-drive ra­tio keeps the revs down when you cruise. The net effect is a bit less like the flight of the bumblebee.

Most of the other new-model revi­sions are more easily seen. Once again the bumpers have been overhauled, this time with an effort toward blending them into the bodywork. You’ll notice that soft valance panels now fill in the space between the actual bumper and the body. Still, the design is awkward; the X1/9 wears its bumpers with less grace than any other new car we can think of.

More appealing are the new wheels and tires. The old, skinny-section 145/SR-13s have been replaced by healthy-­looking 165/70SR-13s on rims in­creased to 5.0 inches in width from 4.5. The car takes a solid stance now, and it looks more substantial. Roadholding should be better too, though we have not verified that likelihood with a skid­pad test.

Of course, the most conspicuous visu­al changes are right in the cockpit. The only firm link with the past is the steer­ing wheel, which continues its old shape—a wonderful, supermodern, four-spoke dish—but now is black in­stead of bright metal. The dash is all new, though the instrument cluster has very much the same layout as before—and the same complement of speedom­eter, tachometer, and electrical-system, water-temperature, and fuel-level gaug­es. Frankly, we have mixed emotions about this particular revision. It looks fine, and there is now a lockable com­partment on the passenger side. But the old dash was formed into broad trays on both sides of the center radio module, and they were terrifically handy for holding toll money, sunglasses, ciga­rettes, and the like. Now, all those ne­cessities of travel must be poked into a narrow pigeonhole on the console, just forward of the shifter.

Still, the X1/9’s interior is impressive, particularly for its appearance of quali­ty. Expensive-looking materials are used everywhere, and all the bits fit together solidly. The carpet of the test car was trying to pull itself out from under the bezel surrounding the brake lever, but apart from that, the assembly was flaw­less. From inside, we’d say the car defi­nitely looks its price.

Certain aspects of the driver’s accom­modations have gone slightly wrong, however. We don’t fit in quite as well as before. The seats are exceptionally comfortable, very deeply bucketed, and adjustable for backrest angle. They ac­tually feel as good as they look. But somehow, they seem puffed up a bit more than before, and thigh clearance is tighter under the steering wheel. Worse yet, as a result of some subtle reposi­tioning, the steering-wheel rim mows everything above 2800 rpm off the ta­chometer face. While the problem is greatest for tall drivers, anyone whose head is high enough to see over the top of the wheel is likely to miss at least part of the tach. The puffy seats also seem to reduce legroom slightly—not a painful encroachment, because the X1/9 was not critically short before, but anytime you make a small car smaller, the squeeze is noticeable.

In fact, one of the X1/9’s greatest at­tributes, in our opinion, is that it is ex­ceptionally roomy and comfortable for a sports car of this size. It’s uncommonly wide inside, so your shifting arm doesn’t get tangled up in your passen­ger’s elbow. Moreover, there is a great deal of cargo space: a large, irregularly shaped compartment in front and a full­-width rectangular volume in the tail. In the past, this rear trunk tended to be a hot box, because of the position of the engine just in front and the exhaust sys­tem just below. Some extra insulation has been added in the new model, but we still suspect it’s the right place to carry home the pizza.

Another aspect of the X1/9’s charm is the ease with which it takes to fresh-air motoring. The lightweight roof panel is no problem for one person to lift off, and it can be stowed in the front trunk just under the lid, still leaving room for a fair amount of cargo beneath. Because this is a targa-style convertible, you’re left with sheetmetal pillars in the rear corners of the cockpit and a glass wall behind, both of which are barriers to close communion with nature. But on the plus side is an uncommonly draft­-free cockpit. And if you put the side windows up, leaving only the roof off, there is very little more turbulence in­side than with most sunroofs.

But even if you don’t like sun on your head, the X1/9 is still fun. Every time we drive one of these little sweethearts, we’re reminded of how exhilarating it is to fling around a low-mass car. No pon­derous bulk. No grunts and groans. Just put your fingertips on the controls and express your wishes. You feel as though you can go anywhere—straightening curves, around plodders, into half-size parking slots. You’re not limited to the moves that normal cars can make. Driv­ing the X1/9 is more like running sit­ting down.

Realistically, of course, it is a car, and we car critics must attempt to distill its behavior down to normal road tester’s terms. Like almost every car in the world, the X1/9 understeers, yet it is much more amusing than most because it’s one of the few road cars alive these days in which you can definitely sense the rear tires building up slip angles. You have the feeling that the tail is try­ing to hang out back there—not get away and whack the fence, but just get a little drift angle going. We regard this as a genuine bonus. For the experi­enced driver, it’s a little extra activity to play with. For the novice, it’s a warning of what might happen, long before he’s even close to the soup.

We do have a few mild criticisms of the X1/9’s responses. The test car had very little self-centering in the steering. You have to consciously crank the wheel back ahead again after every turn­—probably a quirk of this particular exam­ple since it hasn’t been a problem on others we’ve driven. Also, the new five­-speed shifter is spring-loaded toward the center of the pattern—the three­-four slot—so you must pull hard left to keep from getting hung up in the cross­bar on the one-two shift. If the spring is really necessary, which we doubt, it should be a little less pushy.

Finally, the test car had a vapor-lock problem when we restarted a warm en­gine—not enough to prevent the start, but enough to make running very rag­ged for a minute or two. Fiat has a fix, and a factory spokesman thought it had been applied to this car. If it had, the engine was not impressed.

So there you have it, a couple of warts on what remains an engaging little sports car. We agree that the price in­creases of the past two years are large to the point of being alarming, but we think the X1/9 is still the leader in the bite-size sports-car class. That has to be worth something.

Besides, there’s one thing we all know about new-car prices: there is no sense in waiting for them to go down.

Counterpoint

Forget drinking. If your spirits are in need of uplifting, I suggest taking a large dose of X1/9, especially on sunny days. That way you can peel back the top and let the sun warm your body while the roadster’s fancy footwork warms your careworn heart.

I can overlook the fact that the X1/9’s engine thrashes incessantly, that the cen­ter console puts a dent in my right shin, and that the beer-tap shift lever only co­operates part of the time, simply because this car is so playful. The X1/9 may be an up-to-the-minute sports car, but it’s bursting with old-style fun. There’s com­munion among you, the car, the road, and the elements. It shadows your every move as if you were wired to it, and it’s so nim­ble it could probably do the hustle.

If you’re car-shopping with serious ideas about Interstate capability, trunk space, or people room, walk on by. But if you’re up for a runabout that’s perfect for mad dashes to the liquor store or for rushing through the mountains to Elsi­nore for lunch, then form up at your local Fiat dealer. And be ready to smile. —Rich Ceppos

I get a warm feeling when I run across something good that has been made better. Like this new X1/9. The little dear has always been a particular favorite of mine. I’ve always liked its looks, its handling, and its high fun-to-drive rating. My only complaint has been the absence of power and a five­-speed gearbox. The new car takes care of that, thank you. Now, something happens when you put your foot to the floor. No more waiting—yawn—for the tach needle to creep its way toward the red zone. And the ratios in the new box have the right numbers—no untoward gaps to reduce your forward momentum. I am not very fond of the Fiat Strada–style rocker switches, and the only thing I can say about the strange shift knob is that it certainly is a strange shift knob. Yessir, in this case, good has definitely gotten better. —Mike Knepper

Addiction is the scourge of car fanatics. Yesterday, I spent five hours at the wheel of the X1/9 just because it gives me the simply uncontrollable urge to stretch out the wonderful moments until just about forever. The X1/9 is intoxicating. Once I discovered how to dislocate my right knee in order to slip in under the wheel, little could have dislodged me short of a bomb under the seat. Put the car on and it feels like a Gucci loafer: snug, but pliant and comfortable. Put it in gear and it feels like a junior Ferrari: noisy, but firm and di­rect. It goes, handles, and stops with an energy level that raises yours so high you feel you may never come down. Like all addictions, however, this one has its bad sides, and they detract from the joys of this otherwise rambunctious and efficient little whippet. Unless your right ankle is just naturally built funny and hooked to a foot the size of a Frisbee, you won’t be able to heel-and-toe the pedals without creative orthopedic surgery. And the shift linkage has all the obstinate qualities of a spoiled brat, badly in need of a solid course in remedial manners. But . . . par­don me, I have to go drive it again. —Larry Griffin