Fix It Alla Time

The world is coming to an end!

Fiat, the Italian auto maker, is about to become the third largest automobile manufacturer in the WORLD!

I've had two Fiats in my life. They both drove me nuts--especially the first one. That was a lovely sea green model that needed towing so often in the first week that I took it back to the used car dealer and asked for my money back.

This apparently is not done in Iowa, but I persisted. It culminated in the dealer sneaking out of the back door and me following him. I saw him go into in a building at the back of the car lot, and when I opened the door, I discovered he had ducked into a broom closet.

He agreed to give me a refund, but when the check arrived, he hadn't signed it. This meant another trip to the dealership, where I was told he was out of town. His brother agreed to sign it, though, so that was that.

I took my check, went to another dealer, and bought ANOTHER Fiat, this one brand new and presumably able to operate longer than 90 minutes at a time. Everyone was sure I was crazy. (Ha. I never said I wasn't!)

The new Fiat was yellow with itty black racing stripes, and I loved it. I had loved the sea green one, too. Not only were they CUTE, they were both very comfortable. The cars themselves were small, but the passenger compartments were roomy as heck. It was like sitting on a comfy little sofa to drive a car.

Alas, the yellow car also began to act up shortly after I got it. It didn't like to be driven in the rain, and it didn't like to be driven when the weather was hot. I'd be driving along on my way home from work, rain would begin to fall, and maybe 15 minutes later the car would just quit dead on the highway. I'd park it as far off the roadway as I could without going into the ditch, gather up my briefcase, and thumb a ride home. (Easier than it sounds. Do you have any idea how WARY Iowans are of women hitchhikers wearing business suits and high heels out beside the highway?)

The guy at the gas station who towed my car told me about a foreign car mechanic in Lisbon (Iowa). The guy was a genius. He knew all about Fiats and shared my love for them. He said the problem was their new-fangled computerized fuel relay system. (This was in the early days of computers--the one we used at work was about the same size as the whole Fiat!) He said that when the computer sensed something was WRONG--"Rain! Dio, it's RAINING!!" or "HOT! Too hot to drive!!"--it would shut off the gas, and the engine would quit. The mechanic simply wired around the computer so the fuel relay system operated without thinking, and that took care of that.

The thing is, I'm a sucker for cute cars. Yeah, I don't have one now, and I don't drive much, either, and I probably will never own another car again in this lifetime...EXCEPT--there's always an EXCEPT with suckers like me--if I win the lottery and buy a SMART CAR!!!!

A Smart car is so cute you could eat it--the Smart salesroom in Paris is like nothing so much as a giant version of a revolving pastry dispenser at the automat. Each delicious little Smart comes in its own little slot inside the huge glass tower, and you can walk in, point to the one you want, and watch the machinery move it out of its slot, into an elevator, and down to the main floor. If you want to buy it on the spot and drive it away, you simply hand over $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the model, and happiness is yours!

But I digress...I congratulate Fiat for rising so high in the automotive world. It wasn't Fiat's fault that the guy at the first dealership (GM...ha!) couldn't figure out how to keep it running.

They make lovely cars. I wish them well.