Barchetta - Any advice.

The genuine UK Barchetta IS NOT an import.

The car is only made in left hand drive. They are UK spec, support, warranty, spares etc. in every repsect except for the steering wheel being on the LHS.

The lights are uk. The speedo reads UK MPH primary, km secondary. The trip/distance is in miles not km.

This is a must have compared to the competition IMHO. Far cheaper, full of original Italian flair ansd styling.

As with all soft top cars hoods and rear screens will wear with time and Fiat original replacement are axpensive. Rear screen is about £80.

The Barchetta is built on the Punto 1.8ie running gear and suspension ( nearest to Punto HGT) so the car is not alone on the basic mechanical side of things. Clearly trim and panels are different.

The Barchetta is also hand built. In this respect one could ardue that this is a good or bad point. The good and bad virtues are based around a machine out of spec rapidly reproducing the same erros many times before the error is spotted, vs, a sloppy human on a Friday afternoon.

The coachwork on the Barchetta is really hand built. To this end you will find very slight variations in panel alignment if you are really critical with a magnifying glass. If you don't know this fact you won't spot the variation. The most obvious area (if you know where to look) is around the front of the car in the bonnet and headlamp interface area. The car has what appears to be a continuous wing to wing section, however the two wings are separate and there is a front panel member that joins at the inner side of the headlamps. At this join one cand see in most cars are slight variation in line and gap between the bonnet and the wing/front clearances.

Nick /////

Cheers Nick, that was really useful. I shall start viewing some now.

Thanks again.