Square, orange and prone to breakdown, this Fiat 126 was a seventies car in a nineties world. But country girls Fan Johnstone and best friend Fiona just loved their car-about-town

Back in the early nineties, when you could still rock up to Paddington in your car and jump onto the Penzance train, my best friend Fiona had a Fiat 126. It was scruffy, orange and tiny, and we adored it. If, like us, you were in your twenties, the Fiat 126 – the lesser-known, humbler and slightly eccentric cousin of the Fiat 500 – was one of the gang. It got you places, it was a laugh, it was reliably unreliable and full of character. Launched in 1972 as the Fiat 500’s successor, it kept the cinquecento’s tiny rear-mounted air-cooled engine but adopted a squarer, supposedly more practical design.

Fiona’s 126 had originally belonged to her boyfriend David. Having grown up in Cornwall but now living in London, Fiona and I were self-described “poor country girls come to town”, so we were used to things that didn’t work and having to make do and mend. But David came from a Porsche-owning London family. Given that the Fiat 126 was the opposite of aspirational, you might wonder why an ambitious businessman like him decided to buy such a squit of a car.

“I didn’t want to lose my no-claims bonus when I got a company car,” says David. “I wanted a Fiat 500 but they were quite rare and expensive, even back then in 1990, and I wanted something small and cheap to insure so I went for a 126. I bought it for £150 in Hounslow. I wasn’t even sure it would make it the 10 miles back home.”

David sanded it all down and did a complete respray in its original colour – burnt 1970s orange.

“Several mechanics tried to fix the fact that it kept breaking down,” he says. “One gave me my money back after it broke down five minutes after he’d fixed it. He was so embarrassed. And the AA wrote me a letter saying I was abusing the breakdown/recovery service. But then it broke down again at St Paul’s. Fiona and I had to push it all the way home because we had no AA cover.” Home being two miles away at the aptly named Perseverance Works in Shoreditch.

With his Yamaha Virago 750 motor bike, a classic V-twin cruiser, to get around on, David then gave the car to Fiona.

“It was ready to be scrapped, but I replaced a condenser, which cost 50p, and it lived again,” she says. (Technical note: the condenser is a tiny electrical component in the ignition system. Its job is to absorb the electrical surge when the points open, prevent excessive sparking across the points and help the ignition coil generate a strong spark at the spark plugs. Importantly, when a condenser starts to fail, a car can misfire, run badly, stop altogether and appear to have a more serious fault than it really does. David and Fiona’s car had been written off as a hopeless case, but the cure turned out to be a component worth about the same as a loaf of bread at the time.)

The first expedition Fiona took her Fiat 126 on involved driving me out to west London on a mission to acquire a kitten. I said to her: “Do not let me get back in this car with more than one of them.” We came home with two kittens. Lola Showgirl and Playboy Dean mewled in a basket at the back of the Fiat all the way from Acton to my flat in King’s Cross. When we got there, my flatmate NJ reminded me that we’d very recently had a conversation in which we’d decided no kittens were to live at the flat.

Meanwhile, recalls David, an argument with Fiona “resulted in her reversing the car up the road, then driving it full pelt into a skip – just to piss me off because I’d given it to her. Which it did. My poor little Fiat!”

Yet the 126 wasn’t ready to shuffle off its ignition coil yet. It was still hardy enough for Fiona to career us around town on our way to clubs while I painted my toenails on the dashboard.

Its last adventure was a magical mystery road trip. There’s a picture of me outside my flat before we left. I don’t know why I’m wearing a red leather coat with black fur trim to go on a drive with my best friend. I can only imagine I’d been flicking through too many Helmut Newton books featuring photos of women wearing fur coats in limousines, and figured if I was going to get anywhere near that kind of adventure I’d better walk the walk. A vintage leather coat with faux fur trim and a Fiat 126 wasn’t exactly a mink and a Cadillac – but it was a start.

We didn’t know where we were going, but first we had to get it started. The trick, Fiona explained, was to bounce up and down furiously in the front seat. It liked that. Was it the choke? The gears? We can’t remember. But it worked. (Note from David: “It was the starter motor. It was buggered. To start the car, you had to put the key in the ignition, pull a lever by the handbrake to actually engage the electric circuit, and start rocking it up and down.”)

Fiona and I ended up in Suffolk, having fun heckling the “suffocating” beauty of the villages – “Damn you Lavenham, we can’t take it anymore” – till we discovered the charity shops were stuffed with the sublime tweeds, cashmeres and leather shoes of the very dear rich and departed. On our drive home Fiona couldn’t see in the rear-view mirror because the tiny car was stuffed to the hilt with coats, bags and hats. Then it started making a funny noise – but as we didn’t know what to do about it, our only solution was to turn up the radio, open the windows, spark up a tiny “fat one” and sing like Supergrass.

We made it home, and the noise turned out to be a loose alternator. A larger washer fixed it, but “it wasn’t a viable repair,” says David. “What’s more the MOT and tax were due soon. Then one day a courier van banged into it, knocking its rusty bumper off.” David claimed on the driver’s insurance and bought a white Fiat 127 with the money. The 126 was, sadly, scrapped.

“I loved all my Fiats,” says David, who’s had five in total, “and I loved that rather special 126 too. It wasn’t pretty, reliable or fast, but you could park it anywhere. It was only three metres long.”

Which kind of sums it up. The Fiat 126 wasn’t glamorous, dependable or sensible. It broke down, got pushed home, carried kittens, survived rows, took us clubbing and somehow kept going. The Fiat 500 may be the icon, but those of us who rattled around in a 126 as 20-somethings in the nineties can’t help having a soft spot for this scruffy, funny little underdog.

BUYING A FIAT 126 TODAY
The Fiat 126 remains cheaper than its famous cousin, the Fiat 500. Which seems only fitting for a car that has always been the charming underdog.

1970s Models
•Project cars: You can find non-running models or rust-heavy restoration projects starting from £500 to £1,500.
•Good/usable cars: Clean, running, and road-worthy everyday examples generally cluster between £2,500 and £4,500.
•Mint condition cars: Because the earliest 1970s Italian-built versions are the rarest and most desirable to collectors, pristine or fully restored examples regularly command £6,000 to £8,500.

1990s Models
For a more up-to-date Fiat, I very recently found a 1990 Fiat 126 with 24,000 miles on the clock advertised for £5,950, while a restored 1991 example with 64,500 miles, and with works done by the team at Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics, was on the market for £11,995. Both are white with cute red and green Italian-nod stripes. So the good news is that, compared with many classic cars, the Fiat 126 remains relatively affordable.

This is from Idler #111.

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