ROB CATANIA'S 1970 124 COUPE

Well, just when you thought Rob’s gloating could not get any worse, he decides to pull this one out of the bag! Yes here it is, his other Coupe. The veritable black sheep of his Fiat flock, his 1970 BC. In fairness, nobody should deny him the right to gloat for it truly is a magnificent vehicle and more than worthy of his pride.

Yes, you have seen it before somewhere. That somewhere, if it wasn’t in person, was more than likely in Guy Croft’s workshop manual, page 5. It was quite a pleasant surprise for us to see it there when we bought his book back in 1996 and started thumbing through the pages. Guy, if you’re reading this, thanks again for the publicity. It was a nice gesture. Unfortunately, it also swelled Rob’s ego beyond belief. Okay, I better stop now before Rob freaks out… From here I’ll just let Rob take you through the car’s specs and history. jc.

Joey, you just love breaking my balls, don’t you? Ok, never mind the BS, allow me to present my black beauty. I purchased this car for $50 CDN back in 1987. My original intent was far from having another fancy Fiat. I was quite content with my yellow 72 and this particular car was just going to be a parts donor. Despite that, I was impressed with the fact that for a parts car, its overall condition was really not that bad. It had 70 000 original miles on it. The body, although rough, was still pretty straight and it still had the original factory yellow paint. I was also fortunate to find this car with an untouched interior, no scuffs, no rips, complete. So naturally I earmarked the interior for sale. Beyond that, I really didn’t give this car a second thought. That is, until I started dismantling it. As I worked underneath the car, I got a good look at the floorboards, the frame rails, jacking points, sills and shock towers – no rust, not even a bit. It was clean and straight and that really made it a no brainer. It would be a shame to crush it; this car was a keeper.

Did I say no rust? Well, that’s not entirely true. But fortunately for me the rust was concentrated primarily on the outer front fenders and the lower front valance. There was also some minor surface rust on the rear fender lips and on the lower door skin but there was no perforation and they were very straightforward to fix. This was peculiar since outer rust is generally an indication of even greater perforation underneath. Ultimately I was still left with a major problem of having to deal with severely rusted front fenders.

Rust repair itself isn’t too complicated but my circumstances at the time added a challenging dimension to the job. First of all, my decision to restore the car essentially doubled my existing workload. I was already up to my eyeballs in work fixing my yellow Coupe.

Taking this job on and trying to juggle two restorations at the same time was just crazy, especially since I did not have adequate facilities and barely sufficient materials. Even back then, I considered it nothing short of a small miracle to be able to find NOS metal fenders for my Coupe. The problem was that those puppies were quite possibly the last ones one earth and they were already set aside for use on my yellow 72. Fixing the fenders with welded patchwork was simply too labor intensive as would be fabricating them from scratch out of sheet metal, not to mention cost prohibitive as well. After some contemplation, I came up with a solution, not an easy one but a solution nonetheless - fiberglass.

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