Tagged: Fiat
Small or medium rare cars
Rarity on four (or even three) wheels isn’t always the result of a purposely-planned creation from a bespoke source. Sometimes it happens because a child can’t make “vroom vroom” noises with a toy.
That’s how the pink Hot Wheels “Beach Bomb” rear-loader of 1969 became so rare, that only 2 are known to exist. It was made in the image of a VW Kombi, with 2 surfboards poking out the back. And it was pink, which wasn’t seen as a popular colour.
The Beach Bomb prototypes were found to be too top-heavy and prone to falling over while kids were letting them roll across the ground. Hot Wheels fixed this problem by going into production with a weighted model VW that carried the surfboards on its side.
The rear-loader prototypes were left with Hot Wheels employees – and one of the pink models ended up with a collector. It’s now valued at over $150,000.
I currently have a rare car in my driveway – but it’s bigger than a toy, planted well on the road and it’s black. Only 1,284 Smart ForFour Brabus were made in the Netherlands in the production years of 2005 and 2006. I believe only 50 of them made it to Australia. In 2006, they cost an eye-watering $39,990.
I only became aware of this sporty Smart through a friend’s enthusiasm for the model. This 2006 Smart ForFour Brabus manual turbo had 200,000 kilometres on the clock, plus a few minor hail dents on the very small area of the car that’s made of metal, not plastic.
It was a bit of a fixer-upper that also came with a damaged ForFour, so it wasn’t suitable for his garage. I felt it was worth buying, for the car’s rarity and its 177 horsepower.
Oh yes – it packs 130 kW. That’s because it’s based on the ’00s Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart, with some extra tuning by Brabus to get an extra 17 kW out of the 4G15T engine. It’ll hit 100km/h in around 6.9 seconds.
So I negotiated a price with the seller, had the wreck delivered on a trailer and awaited the delivery of the Brabus, with its plates taken off on arrival.
It has a passable exterior, but a nice interior. Leather seats have headrests embossed with the letter ‘B’. It’s equipped with air conditioning and an Alpine audio unit. The car has a clear plastic roof on the front half, and a glass roof on the back half. Interior blinds take the bite out of the sun.
After spending quite a bit of money on a new timing belt, gaskets and suspension, the Brabus was back on the road – albeit on ‘regular’ rims, with the damaged Brabus rims on the wreck.
It’s great to drive, with 2nd and 3rd gears building up a head of turbo steam in a jaw-dropping way. It’s only carrying 1,090kg so the power-to-weight ratio is 8.4kg per kW.
I will be looking to sell it in 2026, so watch this space if you’re a bizarre Brabus fan.
My motoring history has a few rare beasts. It started with a Spanish SEAT Ibiza ..then a Polish FSM Niki ..a Daihatsu Copen ..a Ford Ka ..a Hyundai Grandeur ..a Ford Taurus ..a Ford Laser Lynx ..a Suzuki X-90 ..a Dodge Avenger ..and my ’85 Subaru Vortex XT
Just like that Hot Wheels Beach Bomb, this scrappy sports car from Brabus gives me the vroom-vrooms – but no surfboards needed.
I’ll pay you, in cars..
A character in the old Popeye stories, Wimpy, would try to con others into buying his meal, saying “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”.
That was the promise of a little payment that would not be kept. However, a bigger promise that was kept involved a strange little Eastern Bloc car that went on sale in Australia in 1989, which was apparently supplied here as payment for services to the Polish government.
That car was the FSM Niki 650 – and I’ve now owned 3 of these Polish-built Fiat-licenced 1972-designed cars, known in Europe as the PolskiFiat 126p. They have a tiny 2-cylinder air-cooled engine in the back – an arrangement like the VW Bug.
I got to hear about the payment in cars when I went to a Niki graveyard in Brisbane to scavenge some parts from a group of Nikis before they’re scrapped in a few months.
They’re all owned by Fiat mechanic Angelo from APF Motors – he used to run the Autostrada dealership in Macgregor to sell them new.
He says the white one above was the car they used to get Australian Design Rules (ADR) approval in 1988. Angelo pointed out that it has slightly smaller side vents. The ADRs on the cars went OK, but required the plastic bumpers.
Angelo says Nikis were around $3,500 landed here – and sold for $7,990 as Australia’s lowest priced car. There were plenty of red and white ones imported, but only a handful of blue ones.
He says the importer, E. Kandt of Queensland, was a woman working for the Polish government here, and getting paid in cars!
Apparently she couldn’t call them Fiat in the Aussie motor marketplace due to legal issues (even though Fiat wasn’t selling here then), so went with the Polish manufacturer FSM and called the car after her nickname, “Niki”.
A “Niki” badge was among the items I picked up today at the wrecking yard. Australia was the only place in the world where you’d find this model name on sale. I also grabbed some Niki-branded headlight protectors.
I paid Angelo for the parts, and it’s not even Tuesday.
Classic and Clunker 