Sadly, the ten-year run of the Fiat Barchetta coincided with a period when Fiat was notably absent from the U.S., once Turin’s primary market for sporty droptops. When Fiat Auto boss Paolo Cantarella first proposed it in 1991, the company had been gone from America for a decade and had no plans to return. Production ended in 2005, six years before Turin returned stateside with the modern 500, and an opportunity was definitely missed here.

A few Barchettas, like this one we spied lapping Sonoma Raceway, have since trickled in as private imports. Although it’s an unconventional sports car, it’s hard not to think that this car would have sold well in the States. Despite being too expensive and front-drive, it did well in Europe, and even though it was never built in right-hand drive, it also found loyal fans in the U.K. and Japan. No, it’s not as sharp-edged as a Mazda Miata or an MGF, but it was fun, cheap, and good-looking, upholding all the basic values of its ancient ancestor, the Fiat 850 Spider.

In 1991, Fiat was just finalizing the Chris Bangle-penned Fiat Coupé, and on the strength of that bold design, Cantarella casually said to the product planners and designers, “It would be great to round off the Fiat range with a little spider.” 

At the time, Turin was riding high on the success of the Panda and Uno as well as subsequent eighties launches like the Tipo. The 1990s would prove to be a bonanza of popular products for it in Europe, mostly notably the Mk1 Punto, then in pre-production for a 1993 launch. In America, the brand was entirely absent following its ignominious 1983 exit, brought on by poor quality control and an indifferent dealer network.

Creating the Fiat Barchetta

This new Spider was an almost extracurricular project, with no firm deadlines or even direction from Cantarella other than one point: if it was to be built, it had to be cheap to engineer and produce. The only feasible way to make it happen was to piggyback the project onto the “Project 176” Punto design, front-drive be damned. Fiat wasn’t the only automaker to create a front-drive 1990s sports car. Ford (of Australia, with the Capri) and Lotus (with the Elan M100) had some the same, with mixed results thanks to the success of the Miata. This Fiat came well after those two projects, and Turin knew exactly what it was getting into.

Fiat’s sedan-based sportsters of the past were a direct inspiration, particularly the 850 Spider, but the designers (led by Andreas Zapatinas and Alessandro Cavazza working under Bangle) let their imaginations free and proposed four different styles. Each had codenames: Marinara, Diavola (an open car with Fiat Coupé looks), Atomica (a softer Marinara), and Bismark (sort of Alfa RZ-like with tall, bluff sides and quickly rejected). 

The “Marinara” got chosen, and by late 1992, the car was almost done. Although the 850 Spider was the direct inspiration for the car, Zapatinas and Cavazza didn’t really lift anything directly from that Giugiaro design. The front overhang has some echoes but not much else. They also referenced many other Italian spiders, especially the Ferrari 166 Touring Barchetta’s body side kink. In the best retro way, it was a car that referenced the past but looked entirely new. 

Zapatinas & company also came up with many great design details, like the fantastic door handles. It’s a flush design with a delicate chrome handle that pops out with a push on one side, a much better solution than the powered pop-out handles on today’s EVs. (A design trend that should die.)

The Barchetta’s interior was also partly inspired by the Coupé, featuring body-color elements and a design done by Peter Davis and Guiseppe Bertolusso. Fiat’s interior materials greatly improved in the 1990s and the Coupé and Barchetta cabins were among its best, with pretty-looking dials and gauges and colorful splashes of detail. In a sense, it was just like the best classic Fiat Spiders—based on a family sedan or hatch but tailored to feel sporty and special.

Pretty, But Pricey

The car’s prototypes were all engineered by Stola, who built a wonderful Barchetta-based concept in 1996, the Lancia Thema-powered, fender-flared, pastel-green Stola Dedica. This concept came up for sale in 2020, and it made a big splash at the 1996 European motor shows, but Fiat never developed the production Barchetta any further than its initial spec.

It drew power from the Punto’s biggest engine, a 1.8-liter 16V job with 130 hp and a five-speed gearbox (no automatic was ever offered). It was fun to drive, too, though not much of a track warrior. To build it cheaply, Fiat brought in coachbuilder Maggiora, who in those days were building the Lancia Kappa coupe on contract and had done many small jobs for Fiat in the past (including engineering the Panda van). In a sense, this arrangement also mirrored Fiat’s earlier deals with Bertone and Pininfarina on past sports car variations of regular products, like the 850 Spider and X1/9.

Production began in February of 1995, and the Barchetta debuted at that year’s Geneva show. Interest was strong from the start and the Barchetta’s style appeal was undeniable. However, even with all the cost-saving ideas, the Barchetta still ended up costing quite a bit more than a Miata, which put a damper on how many Fiat could realistically sell.

Outsourcing the build to Maggiora may have cost less than setting up a dedicated production line and preserved valuable factory space for volume sellers like the Punto, but it created other problems. Maggiora had to hand-build parts of the shells, and the car had many complex welds because it needed to stiffen up the Punto-based chassis. Also, since it was sold only in Europe and Japan (all were LHD), sales were never huge, though it did respectably well for an open car that sold in many markets with harsh winters and plenty of rain.

Fiat could not have sold it in the U.S. without re-establishing a dealer network, and since they were doing so well without America, it made no sense to do so. The later 2010s-era Miata-based 124 Spider (often dubbed the “Fiata” in America) didn’t really do too well on either side of the Atlantic, but in the 1990s, cars like this were very hot in the U.S. It surely would have found an audience here.

Maggiora went bankrupt and shut down in 2003, which forced Fiat to move production to the Mirafiori plant after a brief hiatus. They might have dropped it, but instead decided to give it a modest refresh and tapped none other than Tom Tjaarda (who had styled the 1960s 124 Spider) for the job, though the results weren’t universally loved. These “late” Barchettas are much rarer than the earlier ones, and just over 57,000 were made in all.