It is almost 50 years to the day since the original Fiat 124 Spider first broke cover. Back then, Italian car makers led the way with affordable roadsters, and it was the latest in a long line of models that placed open-top thrills and agile handling ahead of practicality and comfort.
Yet over the following half century, Fiat lost faith in two seater drop-tops as buyers looked first to hot hatches and then to rugged SUVs. So when the slow-selling, left-hand-drive-only Barchetta disappeared from price lists in 2005, the firm didn’t bother replacing it.
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