FIAT
Barchetta

SORRY, BUT YOU'RE NOT about to get objective reporting here. It is, believe me, impossible to judge impassionately the Barchetta on the go, simply because of the way it is when it's static. It's just so special, so particular. It was designed by people who loved it, who were enjoying themselves, refusing to get heavy.     To design a cabin as individual as it's sheetmetal, the Barchetta crew concentrated on building shapes and colours that invite and amuse and intrigue. But because all these parts do their jobs perfectly well, they're never infuriating in the way Italian over-design can be.     So you slip down into it's snug little driver's post, and you're already smiling within. (Yes, you're on the left, but so what?) Then you drive, and the feeling grows. The Barchetta is the difference between fun and serious fun. An MGF is serious fun. The Barchetta is simply fun. It doesn't actually take very long to root out the Little Boat's imperfections. But — and here I guess is the peculiarly Italian characteristic that we're exploring — the Barchetta isn't really the less for it

because it doesn't cloak them in mystery.     The Barchetta is front- drive, supermini-derived, which is not normally the layout of a serious sports car. Instead the Barchetta stays light-hearted: keen and sharp on the turn-in, lively but reassuring. The Barchetta knows the difference between test- track theory and the real- life smiles of down-the- road practice.     The engine is goading, cheerful, keen from the first tickle of the throttle right up to the last sprinting moment when it breasts the tape of the rev-limiter. It's happy to let you hear its efforts, by turns panting and barking and rumbling. It's a petrol engine godammit.     The blokes biased, but Fiat design boss Peter Davies once opined to me that because of things like the Barchetta, we hardly need classic cars anymore. He has a point. It satisfies your leaning towards the oddball, a desire for interesting shapes and unusual sounds, a craving to get close to the machine. But it won't break all the time, it doesn't leak, it's exhaust doesn't wilt every flowerbed in your neighbourhood, and it has an airbag.

by Paul Horrell

  'The engine is goading,
  cheerful, keen from the
 first tickle of the throttle
right up to the last
  sprinting moment'