Upper Middle Petrol Head Drives Phil's Fiat-Abarth OT 1600 Replica

This is the first article of my Upper Middle Petrol Head Drives ... series.  However, I suspect that it could also be my last, given that the owner of the featured car, Phil Blake, is a man of unequalled generosity and trust.

If I were Phil, I would not have offered me a drive of his hand-built, Targa Tasmania class-winning Fiat-Abarth OT 1600 replica.  But that's exactly how I found myself behind the wheel of his diminutive yellow rocket: one day I was chatting to Phil about the car when he said, quite unexpectedly, "you'll have to have a drive!"  Clearly, it was an offer that I was never going to refuse!

Not totally on top of your early- to mid-1960s high-performance Fiats?  According to an ubiquitous on-line source, who describe the OT 1600 as an "extreme variant" of the Fiat 850 Berlina, only four were ever made.  I'm putting my money on Phil, though; he reckons there were five and I have no reason to doubt him.  He also says there are a few other OT - standing for Omologato Turismo - replicas scattered around the world, including one currently under construction in the Netherlands.

As far as replicas go, Phil's gets a huge thumbs-up for combining several big-ticket original components - not the least of them being its extensively rebuilt Fiat 850 Berlina shell - with a number of cleverly adapted or custom-manufactured bits thrown into the mix.  These include an "Abarthised" 1600 Fiat twin cam engine, currently running twin 40 mm Weber IDF carbies, a ported head, fast road cam, lightened and polished rods, high compression pistons, and a bespoke tuned exhaust, resulting in an output of about 120 bhp at the crank.

It's also fitted with a Renault four-speed gearbox, four-wheel disc brakes - Fiat 124 Sport for the front and Mazda 626 calipers with slotted Alfa rotors for the rear - with not one, but two, boosters!  Phil was very ably assisted putting all this together by his friend, Tony Gray, who he credits with being the one who knew what might - and, more crucially - what wouldn't work when selecting, modifying, designing, making and installing parts.

The OT, as it's commonly known, started out as a standard early 1960s Fiat 850 Berlina  shell, riddled with rust and not really salvageable, says Phil.  But salvage it he and Tony did, welding in new metal throughout the car and and replacing its entire floor. 

Starting point:  what the OT used to look like (Phil's photos)

Any doubts about the OT's structural integrity are dispelled by virtue of some well-placed bracing and its full roll cage which, combined with the race seats and multi-point harnesses (five points for the driver, four for the apparently more expendable co-driver), inspire a good deal of confidence.  Also adding to the safety factor is a foam-filled fuel tank, mounted under the bonnet, rather than in the rear of the car as is the case with ex-factory OTs.

Roll bar, above, and the front-mounted fuel cell below (Phil's photos)

The original's red and beige colour scheme (from Car Magazine # 192)

The car's striking yellow and red livery is very, very difficult to ignore.  The basic paint scheme is, in terms of its block colours and stripes, true to the original OT-theme.  However, Phil's personal - and quite understandable - aversion to beige has seen his machine finished in Abarth yellow where the bland off-white features on the originals, which I think you'll agree is a very fetching, yet still era- and marque-appropriate combination.

Yellow and red: undeniably better!

Other key OT-features and accessories have also been cleverly replicated, including the massive rear flares and a deftly styled rear boot spoiler.  As well as adding some authenticity to the car, both are also quite essential; without the flares, the rear wheels would extend way too far from the bodywork to ever pass a roadworthy test and the spoiler does double duty adding high speed stability and helping to draw hot air out of the sometimes searingly hot engine bay.

Mocked up passenger's side rear flare, above, with an under construction driver's side version below (Phil's photos)

Passenger's side flare, ready for primer and paint

The finished article: these monster-sized flares wrap around some serious rubber

This custom spoiler, hand-made of fibreglass, adds down-force and draws hot air from the engine bay

Firing the OT up unleashes one hell of a racket as it greedily sucks air in via its twin IDFs and blasts them out through the serpentine extractors that dominate a big chunk of the engine bay.  Inside or out, it's a raucous affair that's not mitigated by superfluous nonsense like sound deadening or even so much as rubber mounts where the engine's bolted to the chassis (too much vibration when the very torquey motor twists under acceleration, apparently!).  I therefore gladly accepted the aviation-style headphones cum intercom proffered by Phil and that was before we'd even hit the road! 

Abandon all hope, ye who enter.    

Of course, the really big question is what's it like to drive?  I'll be up-front and admit that it was a little intimidating, especially after I Googled the stats and discovered that the 1960s originals are good for about 220 km/h, which is only a bee's appendage short of 140 mph!  Lasciate ogni speranze voi ch'intrate indeed!! 

Phil at the wheel during Club Motori Italia's Lufra hill-climb.

In its current configuration, Phil's OT will "only" do 180 km/h or so - scary enough, I'd have thought - but he hopes that replacing the current gearbox with a VW unit with a higher fourth gear, plus a set of 45mm DCOE Webers, will boost this to around 200.  We'll know if he's achieved his goal later this year when he runs the car at Mt Panorama, New South Wales, home of Australia's most iconic motorsports event, the Bathurst 1000.

Of course, I had no intention of hitting anything like the current 180 km/h top speed on a public  road - and I don't reckon Phil would have let me, anyway - but it speaks volumes for the car's awesome performance.  I'm sure that very few people could even imagine that it'd be so quick, even though it's clearly a serious racing car. 

Also keeping me sensible was the fact that its grunty 1.6 litre twin cam weighs in at more than twice as much as the original 850 cc donk and it's mounted well rear of the back wheels!  I'm sure you've all heard of the pendulum effect that's seen a few under-skilled, over-confident Porsche drivers spear their 911s into the greenery.  I have, too!

Above and below:  Phil puts the OT through its paces at Baskerville (pre-spoiler)

Stomping on the loud pedal results in strong, linear acceleration all the way up to its cacophonous 7,000 RPM redline.  It's quick and determined, like a wilful dog straining at the end of a leash it'd rather not be attached to, while the steering seems to respond to better to a lighter touch than the car's brutish persona would suggest.  Once warmed-up, the brakes with their racing pads are firm and consistent, although the tiny anchor-pedal still requires a fair bit of Blunnie to slow the car down, even with its twin boosters!  

The only thing that's not direct and immediate is the four-speed floor-mounted gearshift, which Phil attributes to the cable actuated mechanism linking the lever to the rear-mounted 'box.  I did miss a couple of down-shifts, even though I was wearing my best Pilotis and thought I'd done a gun job of heel-toeing the brake and throttle, but I'm happy to accept my own inadequacies!  

The man himself:  Phil at the Lufra hill climb

The OT handles very well, sitting flat and tracking predictably on the smooth, sweeping roads around the historic southern Tasmanian town of Richmond and the surrounding countryside where I was able to give it a tiny bit of stick.  I had been expecting it to be harsh and skittish, having been regaled with stories of unexpected - and quite alarming - detours when the car is pushed hard.  However, at enthusiastic but still-legal speeds on good roads it felt reassuringly safe and steady. 

  

Did I mention that the OT was loud?  I mean properly, all-consumingly L-O-U-D !  The engine screams, the exhaust booms, seemingly every last single speck of road debris gets hurled up into the thinly coated inner guards by the sticky race tyres, then all that racket bounces around the car's spartan interior and into the intercom mics where it seems to be further intensified by the headphones!  And I loved every second of it - even if I equally valued the lovely silence when I finally shut the engine down!

Of course, killing the ignition and that blissful silence also meant that my first ever drive of a fully-prepped racing car was over.  It certainly was a blast!  It probably also means that my Upper Middle Petrol Head Drives ... series has come to a premature end.  Unless there's someone out there that's as generous and trusting as Phil is, that is ... .

Alastair

U M P H

(uppermiddlepetrolhead.blogspot.com.au.)