Fiat 850 Coupé 4-cyl rear-engine '68

[Ordered for the summer stint as campus coordinators/teachers for the Foreign Study League in Seefeld, Austria and Düsseldorf, Germany.] It was with this that I succeeded in clobbering two German motorcyclists in the outskirts of Düsseldorf. While the bleeding and semiconscious injured were being removed by ambulance the observing crowd, making false assumptions from the Italian license plate, kept referring to us in a markedly hostile manner as "those Italians." (Perhaps they would have been just as hostile had they known we were Americans; or the hostility may have been simply their high kinetics, of course). Tying down the lid of the front luggage compartment with rope, it now being considerably bent, we proceeded to Rome where it was put back in shape by a body shop owned by friends of the young Roman who was part of the local FSL campus. ("I can get you a real good price on the job!")

This car, like those who evolved it, had its temperamental moments. If the weather report predicted rain a week hence, it would fail to start; any smallest amount of dew would short out the ignition. The rubber connecting hose of the filler tube sprang a leak, so one dared not fill the tank past about 2/3 of the capacity (it lived close to the engine, I seem to remember). One time, driving back from St. Paul, it appeared to overheat for no good reason, and took quite a while and a good push from a garage to get it started again. It went to its final rest in a blaze of glory.