1981 Fiat Spider 2000 TURBO Excellent Rare Great 124 Spider

1981-1982 Fiat Turbo Spider 2000:

Very rare Factory Turbo Fiat Spider convertible. Books and many years of records, 2 keys's.
These cars produced by Fiat North America with a "Legend Industries" Bosch turbo charger system.
An "Amazing Value" in a Sports-Car That was Always WAY AHEAD of its Time and it's Pier's, with engineering and technology - Bosch - that provided it with a belt-driven Twin-Overhead Cam engine, four wheel Disc Brakes, silky-smooth Five-Speed Transmission at a price more affordable than the lesser MGB's of the same period!
Very easy to drive and shift through the gears.Always maintainedand new turbo in 2018. Needs nothing, like new cloth top, tires.When Fiat found themselves in the midst of a turbo revolution in the late 1970's going into the Eighties, the automaker was in the unfortunate position of having done some changes to their traditional sport car model. The old stand by Fiat Spider 2000 had just undergone a nice little Bosch L-Jetronic fuel injection swap in 1980 in order to add some modern juice to the rag top. The year before that Fiat decided to install the DOHC two liter engine from their sedan along with a five speed transmission. These successive upgrades bumped the car up from 80 horsepower with the 2.0 liter DOHC, to 102 horsepower using fuel injection. These were nice improvements, but baby steps compared to some of the other cars coming out of Europe. Turbo power was all the rage. Everyone from Lotus to Pontiac was making some sort of turbo powered car. It just wouldn't do to have Fiat sit on the sidelines without a power adder special for sale.So in the Spring of 1981, Fiat went to work promoting their latest addition; a Turbo Spider 2000. By this time the Spider was only sold in North America as a competitor to Alfa Romeo's own Graduate Spider model. This idea got rolling back in late 1979 when the switch to the 2 liter engine was underway for 1980.Fiat had to figure out who could do the turbo system. An East Coast outfit called Legend Industries got the call. They settled on an IHI RHB6 turbocharger which was modified to work with the two liter engine. It was very small, weighing less than 13 pounds including the wastegate. The twin turbine wheels were small as well allowing them to reduce turbo lag time. The turbo unit has its own intake manifold but still uses the Bosch Lambda Sond Jet tronic fuel injection system. The whole deal is sanitary, emissions legal.The turbo two liter Spider was aimed at increasing low end torque instead of top end horsepower. In that way, it's similar to the Pontiac 4.9 setup which starts boost just off idle and is spooling virtually the whole time. There's no kick in point or sudden whine. She's on right from off idle all the way up to road speed. The horsepower of a Turbo Spider is rated at 120 @6000 rpm and torque is 130 lbs ft at 3600 rpm. Fiat claimed at the time this model could do 0-60 mph in 8.8 seconds which is right up where the Porsche 924 Turbo ran. Fiat had an early production automatic powered Turbo Spider on hand for testing as well as a five speed. At the time Fiat hoped to sell 1000 to 1200 of these machines to Americans.Very few cars have been left unaltered and many have been repainted hiding all traces of turbo lineage on the body. There was still the turbo dash gauge and lots of sundry parts under hood. The wheels often found their way onto other cars as they were glamorous compared to base 124 spec.With only 700 made, they're scarce and decent performers.Production Totals:
The Turbo Fiat 2000 cars were low production. From April 1981 to November 1982 only 700 cars were made. Compared to Fiat's total of 11, 574 Spiders sold in USA that year and 4,824 the next, you can see finding one of these cars is very much the needle in the haystack deal. One advantage is the car is so low key and obscure there's a good chance most owners will have forgotten about it. A good many seems to have been laid up in garages or barns following an unhappy experience with one. You might find a low mileage cream puff, but it's unlikely it will go cheaply. The situation with these cars seem to be either the owner knows all about them or the owner just wanted something other than an MGB. They're well worth checking out if you know of one in good condition. The overhead cam engine is a sweet unit and Fiat knew how to build one of those.