It’s like this engine has the opposite packaging goals of every other engine that wants to take up as little room as possible: this crazy bitch just wants to spread out and take up all the space it can. Look at that fan swung out there on its big arm, or that exhaust manifold looping out there or that bolt-upright distributor. It’s not like it had a ton of room, either; all of this was crammed in the back of the little Fiat here:
This engine just makes me smile. What more could you ask of an engine? My Volvo is a Turbocharged, Supercharged 2 liter with an integrated plug-in electric drive as well. I took one look at it and decided that this is beyond me. A picture of the S60 T8 drivetrain for reference: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/S60T8Driveline.jpg Oh wait, it’s a Fiat, you can’t ask for that lol Without computers, they still could’ve designed things more carefully to make them fit better. Or they could have made models to physically test fit everything, and worked on improvements from there. But they were too busy cranking out cars as fast as they could in post-war Europe. A set of radial tires greatly helped the handling in solo competition. The Semperit radial tires worked great for me, the Michelin radial tires did NOT like the heavy rear engine bias (Engine in the rear), I would spin out when driven hard. I won the 1968 NER Region SCCA Gymkhana with it. Mostly because it was classified in slowest class, “H Production”. The last event, Bud Grocki (RIP), the leader in the A Modified class, showed up without his Lotus. I threw him the keys to my Fiat, he had never sat in a Fiat before, and he beat my best lap time. Shortly after that event, traded down for a 1966 Fiat 1100 station wagon, bought a house and settled into “adulthood” (night school, fix up an old house, kids, Build a house, divorce, career changes, etc…). Russ Unfortunately, when it arrived to NC, it turned out to have leaked most of the oil out of the engine and transmission onto the vehicle below it on the carrier. There must have been a head gasket failure at one point that let coolant into 2 cylinders, which rusted/froze the rings in place. When it fired up, the rings, ring lands, and other assorted metal bits came pouring out. Fortunately there was a crazy guy nearby who had a shop that sold scooters and repaired Fiats. He apparently held the record at Road Atlanta for Fiats. For far too much money, he rebuilt the engine. Even afterwards, it was still just too slow and ultimately unpleasant to drive in the moderately hilly area of NC where we lived. It felt less powerful than a Beetle I owned from the same era. I sold the 850 to a multi-Alfa owner, which proves he was already a masochist.
