16 August 2005

New Toy

Pininfarina / Fiat 124 DSA couple of weeks ago we bought a Pininfarina (ex Fiat) 124 DS Spider in NSW and had it loaded onto the back of a truck and delivered to our door in Brisbane. We had planned to fly to Sydney, train it out to Nowra and pick it up in person then do the road trip home. The weeks around this time saw snow in central NSW and floods on the QLD/NSW border. Call me a wimp, but that’s not the sort of weather I want to be driving an unknown little Italian convertible through, besides that, I’ve owned a variety of Italian cars before and know better...The plan for this little beauty was to be a weekend drive and something that I could tinker with from time to time (yes, that prior knowledge of Italian cars again).

Pininfarina / Fiat 124 DS RustAs this was sold as a roadworthy and registered vehicle that had been lovingly cared for by a Fiat specialist near Sydney, what happened next was just a little bit of a shock. Not long after getting back to my desk from dropping it at a local Fiat guy for the roadworthy inspection in QLD to get the registration transferred I got a call. "This thing's a mess, you might want to come down and look at this..." So, with my stomach starting to turn, off I went back to the mechanic. Long story short - the floor was riddled with rust and the front end was ready to fall out. My friendly interstate Fiat specialist had given this car a mechanical all clear around 6 months ago, and going through the pile of receipts I got with the car he never missed the previous owner for even quite minor things over the years. Got me beat how my guy picked up on the state of the body work in minutes and he missed it on regular visits over 8 years!

Quotes of $2000+ for the floor alone had me researching avenues of how to recover some of the money to get it to the state that it had been represented in the first place. RTA and Fair Trading in NSW took a lot of interest in the parties involved but it came down to me suing the previous owner and them recovering from the mechanic. Not a nice scenario and it would have to take place in NSW. I had intended the "tinkering" to start a little further down the track, but I got a rapid induction back into Italian car ownership. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Carl for the use of his shed, equipment, contacts and skills in getting all the work done over 2 weekends and to his lovely wife Bec for keeping the snacks and occasional beers up to us.

At the end of this little nightmare, I finally got to the Department of Transport with RWC in hand only to find that there was no entry in the registered vehicle database for a 1983 124 DS which, according to the nice lady behind the counter, means that ours is the first ever registered in QLD. All-in-all a pretty good feeling to cap of a couple of crappy weeks.

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