The Fiat X1/9 is one of those cars that could have been just about perfect if the company behind it had just pushed that little bit harder. Design? It rocked. Wedges were cool in the 1970s and the Fiat X1/9 wears the same Bertone badge on the side that you’ll find of the most famous of all 1970s wedges, the Lamborghini Countach. And like the Lambo, the X1/9 had its engine behind the seat.
Reviewers raved about the sweet chassis balance, but they all said the same thing: needs more power. The first X1/9s were powered by a revvy but small 1.3-liter engine from the Fiat 128 that generated just 66.5 hp / 67 PS in U.S. tune (you know things are bad when you have to include two-legged horses) and required 15.3 seconds to reach 60 mph (97 km/h) in a 1974 Road & Track test.
Power fell to a pitiful 61.5 hp (62 PS) a couple of years later, though perversely, sprint times seemed to be a couple of seconds faster, then improved to 67 hp (68 PS) with the arrival of a bigger 1.5-liter engine in 1979, dropping the sixty run to 11.8 seconds in Car & Driver‘s hands. Better, yes, but still not good enough to make the most of that jewel of a chassis.
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Now imagine the same car with the same rev-happy character but three times the power. The gray X1/9 in these pictures started life as a 1981 model with the 1.5-liter stone but is now packing a B18C Honda VTEC motor. The listing on the Cars & Bids auction website says the motor started life as an already high-spec JDM version of the 1.8-liter B18C but has since been opened out to 2.0 liters and fitted with upgraded rods and bolts, high-flow injectors, and a tuned engine management system.
There’s also an Edelbrock Performer X intake that pokes through a hole in the rear firewall into the rear trunk, one of the few giveaways, along with the Honda gauge cluster, to this car’s new heart, though a second trunk in the nose is on hand to keep groceries cool. Remember how we said an original X1/9 was rated at 67 hp? This one is claimed to make 215 hp (218 PS), which would easily be enough to drop that zero to 60 mph time to less than 6 seconds especially with the Honda’s LSD helping it lay down those horses.
That mechanical makeover alone would make this car worth bidding on, but this X1/9 is even more desirable thanks to its early Euro bumper conversion. Cars on both sides of the Atlantic were wearing huge girder bumpers by the time this car was made in 1981, but it looks so much better with the tiny bumperettes and stylish 14-inch Campagnolo alloy wheels. Even the Mazda Miata seats look perfectly at home, though we’d ditch the aftermarket steering wheel.
Fiat handed over production of the X1/9 to Bertone in 1982 and killed the model off in 1989, which just so happens to be the year Honda’s VTEC engine made its debut on the JDM Integra. This car gives us a tantalizing taste of what might have been.
Check out the auction listing at Cars & Bids
