Fiat Coupes any good?

Which is effectively derived from the Fiat Twin Cam. It is also the bottom end of the Alfa Romeo Twin Spark and early JTS engines.

Supposedly more tuneable that the 20v unit but requires far more maintenance.

Only the 8V twin spark, the 16V twin spark is based on the FIAT FREE engine.
 
Well my dad has one of these and it does suffer from typical italian build issues.

He got it from new (99) and the dash wasn't put together properly so since then there has been a piece of fabric hanging in front of his speedo, which he couldn't be bothered to fix.

Not long after he got it one of the banks of switches collapsed into the dash, and again he never got it fixed.

His car suffered from the common fiat group problem of a failure in the alarm/siren unit and just started emitting a high pitch shriek at 4:30am that didn't stop so he had to drive it to the middle of nowhere and wait for the dealer to open.

More recently the fuel tank split, its made of a dodgy plastic and all the repair attempts failed. A new tank is £600+ from Fiat and no-one makes a pattern part for it. We got a scrap one for £60 but obviously theres a chance it could go again since the newest cars are 9 years old now.

My dad puts up with it though because he thinks it is the best car he has driven, and he could easily afford a new car (he was looking at an R8 for a while) so he isn't just making do; Says it goes like a gocart.

To my mind though it doesn't feel as fast when he boots it as its figures would suggest - its supposed to hit 60 in 6.3 (20v turbo) but it doesn't feel all that much faster than my 156 v6 (7.1 to 60). I don't know if that is to do with how they measure the 0-60s or if my car has been chipped or if his is slightly broken.

Oh and since new the ride has been very harsh and creaky.
 
I bought one from new in 1998 and the engine finally blew in 2006 (having done 106,000), up until then it had never let me down and the build quality was fine. I really loved my old Coupe and it pained me not to be able to keep her on the road but I just didn't have the time. Luckily I managed to sell her to an enthusiast who's friend ran a specialist Garage in Essex.

One day when I have more time and space I will buy another one, I also want a Droopsnoot Firenza ;)
 
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