(first posted 2/3/2013) I’m pretty sure this is our first Cohort posting (by RiveraNotario) from Chile, and it’s a car that’s a long way from home; in fact, short of the moon it’s probably about as far away as possible. The Polski Fiat 125 is another product of Fiat’s great Eastern Bloc licensing era, which resulted in the region’s most significant modernization of the automobile. The Russians licensed, built and adapted the 124 for their evergreen Lada. Later, the Fiat 1300 served as the basis of the Yugoslavian auto industry. In the mid-sixties, Poland, in desperate need of a new car, also looked to Turin.
The Fiat 125 can be a bit confusing. The too-common assumption is that it’s just an upscale, higher- performance version of the 124. Actually, it is a near-totally different car, but given its modified version of the 124’s passenger compartment, the mistake can be forgiven. The Fiat 125 was a replacement for the 1300/1500 with which it shared aspects of its platform. Its wheelbase was longer than the 124’s. The Fiat 125 was powered by a lusty DOHC 1.6-liter four like that Fiat used in the better-remembered 124 Spider and Coupe.
Not surprisingly, the Polski Fiat 125 didn’t get that: What Fiat licensed to FSO, the state-owned auto builder, was a 125 body and the older 1300/1500 running gear and engine, an OHV four whose displacement reflected the model numbers. Also, the interior was simplified, and other changes were made in consideration of the current conditions in Poland. Production got underway in 1968, and some 1.5 million units were built before the end came, in 1991.
Exports were (obviously) attempted. The Polski Fiat 125 was sold, with various success, throughout Europe, and was for years the cheapest roomy car to be had in the UK. Unfortunately, they rusted ferociously–after all, they were built of cheap East-bloc steel–which probably explains why this one was found in Chile and not in England.
Lets call today (or this week) Commie Car Day (or week). I order the usual mandatory CC toast, for commie cars in this case, so they can be celebrated!
I had one for 6 years it was reliable but crude compared to a 1984 car,put it next to a 60s car which it was and it is pretty good compared to a Ford Anglia or Vauxhall Viva.Mine was an 84 model which was owned by an old lady until she ran someone down with it in 1992 when I bought it.It was towed home twice,once when I drove over a long piece of wood which crushed the clutch’s slave cylinder.It blew a head gasket in Scotland and went home on the AA lorry as I didn’t want to warp it’s alloy cylinder head In the end the rust was terminal and i sold it for £30 with a fortnights tax and MOT to some Scottish holiday makers.There was a lot of good stuff on the FSO Weber twin choke carb,dual circuit 4 wheel discs,remote boot release and a crude cruise control.Often laughed at by car snobs but it was cheap and did the job so who had the last laugh?
I shot a Polish Fiat for the cohort some time back it would be a contempory of this car. We got this model from Fiat and lada The Fiat even had a NZ only model 125T for standard saloon car racing it failed. Survivors are very rare in either brand though several Lada 2107s are alive locally
These were a dime a dozen in neighboring Argentina thru the mid 90s. These along w/ 128s replaced the 1500 in the late 60s and were only pushed to the curb by 147s and Puntos in the late 80s.
Living in the UK in the early ’90s, I didn’t see any of these. There were several examples the FSO Polonez derived from this platform in odd corners of the less savory bits of London. My neighbor made jokes that his Morris Marina was a paragon of reliability if the Polonez was the only point of comparison. Laughing, I told him he had it backwards. We’ve not spoken since.
I think the wheels are off of an ’80s Cressida.
I just logged in to say that – well spotted!
That was my first hunch seeing the picture! ’81-’84 basketweaves, too lazy to google for confirmation, though.
A common go faster modification for speed demons was to drop in a Fiat twin cam and have a Q – car.There was also a neat pick up,most of these had a short,brutal life of abuse and neglect.
@ fastback: the punto came out in 1993.
The iconic car in Poland, my second car that rusted almost as quickly that you would think it`s impossible and used about 15 litres of gas for 100 kilometers ( 14 MPG I guess ). Well I got rid off it after 4 months of ownership – that was in 1989.
How communism killed a great drivers car, with a great engine, great roadholding and great brakes.
These and the Lada 1200 cannot hold a candle to their Italian cousins.
Ah, Fiat. The root of all evil, car-wise, according to popular wisdom. I have to give them credit, as they were the ones who sold to the eastern bloc countries in solidarity with the communist workers when nobody else would. Consider this, had GM or Ford sold CKD kit cars or old tooling to the eastern bloc, what sort of automotive universe would we see? Would they have been old Ford Anglias or Opel Cadets reworked as Polskis, ZAZ/GAZ/LADAs, or the many Soviet Bloc country cars? Or even old US models, vainly transposed into a world that they were never made for? A shoebox Ford or early 50s Chevrolet may have worked on the rough roads and the simplicity of design may have worked, but probably not enough to make up for the gas consumption penalty. Fiats were cheap enough, thrifty enough, and good enough to make it financially feasible for the eastern bloc countries to build them. The money earned by licensing probably kept Fiat afloat during this time, so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. there was a history of Fiat in Poland prior to WWII, and that made it familiar to the local market. In the end, Fiat got the factory that built these, and it produces Fiats (not Polski Fiats, rather just Fiats).
Both Ford and GM did operate in solidarity in the ’20s and ’30s. Ford had a regular branch factory that built Fordson tractors and Model As. GM licensed the ’32 Buick as the Leningrad L1 limo, through a rather sneaky arrangement by Harley Earl’s “independent” consulting service.
There was a pretty good reason the USSR didn’t get Ford or GM designs – USSR didn’t have enough foreign currency to pay for them. Fiat on the other hand was located in Italy which (in the 1960’s) had a very strong Communist Party presence in the government. The government orchestrated a deal for Fiat to work with the Soviets to produce a car loosely based on the Fiat 124.
The Italian government arranged for Fiat to accept payment in low quality Russian steel. The resulting rust disasters ruined Fiat in the U.S. and forced them to leave the market. Alfa’s and Lancias also suffered from the Russian tinworm…and were nearly destroyed as well.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/classiccars/9018675/Lada-has-the-last-laugh
So, perhaps, Ford and GM were lucky to have avoided making a deal.
I was assigned one of these with a driver when doing consulting in Algeria in 1971. I ended up driving it and vaguely remembered it having 4 on the tree and about 5 turns lock to lock steering, it felt like a perfectly good Fiat was assaulted by a ’52 Chevy.
To call this car a Fiat 125 is a travesty. I drove both in the 70’s. The Fiat 125S was a fine car with a lovely 100hp twin-cam.
The lookalike Polski had an wheezy agricultural old nail of an engine, coupled with vague and very heavy steering.
The shape is the same, but the character and contents differ wildly.
Why did Fiat use the 1300/1500 as the basis for the Fiat 125 instead of upscaled version of the Fiat 124 or was that in essence the later Fiat 132/Argenta (should the latter not be largely based on the Fiat 131)?
The same could be said for why Fiat did not replace the 1100 in the early-1960s with a downscaled version of the Fiat 124 to precede the FWD Fiat 128?
In theory Fiat could have based the 125 on a lengthened 124 floor pan. It would have had more modern suspension for a start, but it would have been weaker than the 125 that we ended up with, as the 124 was not very strong in the diff, the front suspension and at least in the initial versions, the torque tube as well. Some if these weaknesses were exacerbated in the Sport Coupe and Spider with their more powerful engines and lower upper body rigidity. It is not surprising that
Whilst a suitably strengthened and lengthened 124 Sedan base would have been better, Fiat used the sturdy base of the 1500 to develop the 125. It is not surprising that a few 124s were upgraded with 125/132 rear diffs and stub axles.
The awful 132 was basically the 125 chassis with a longer wheelbase, less interesting and less characterful styling, a horrible dashboard no matter which year it was made, and rear coil springs which by most reports made it handle worse than the 125.
And did I mention the fuel tank? The 125 and 132 (don’t know about the Polski or Lada versions) had a large fuel tank on the right hand rear corner of the boot space. What a monumently stupid place to put it! What were they thinking? All the 124s were better in that regard. Perhaps that was one reason why the Fiat 125 was never sold in the US?
Through the decades I saw lots of Ladas/Zhigulis (Fiat 124 derivatives) with broken front suspension turned inside out, left disgraced on the curbside. But I never saw Polski Fiat 125P (Fiat 125 derivative) in that kinda situation. There had been tens of thousands of them as daily runners in Eastern Europe back in the day. Some of Dad’s colleagues owned 125P. To get better rear wheel adhesion, they used to put sand sack ballasts into the trunk mostly during the icy winter months. Without the ballast a simple voyage could turn into a nightmarish rear wheel driven drift tour especially on serpentine roads. Sometimes Dad used to load his 1982 Lada 1600 with sand sacks as well.
The Polski Fiat 125P/PZ with the old version of the Fiat’s 1500 ccm carburated 4 cylinder engine (built under license) and rear wheel drive had quite good acceleration. They were fast, big, reliable and comfortable cars. This attribute labeld it as gas guzzlers. Friends of ours used to report 12-14 litres or more of fuel consumption per 100 kms. The folks around us who owned them slowly but surely replaced ’em to smaller Zastava 101 / 128, Fiat 127, TAS Golf Mk.1 or Derby, Opel Kadett-C or IDA Kadett-D, Vauxhall Viva LHD, Chrysler Sunbeam, Cimos-Citroen Dyane and GS, Litostroj-IMV Renault 4, IMV-Austin Morris 1100 or to the Zastava-Yugo 45-55, etc. what had been available on the small car market back in the day as gasoline became a commodity to the civilians with constantly rising prices and limited availability on state owned gas stations. The state owned company executives slowly has got rid of their aging 125P/PZs from their fleets of representative cars and they rather replaced ’em for the then more representative and newer italian Fiat 131 or 132 markted by Zastava, IDA-Opel Ascona-C1, Rekord-E1, Commodore-C or Senator-A1.
The very famous small folk car of those years had been also the Zastava 750/850 “Fićo” (derived from the Fiat 650, 750, 770…), Fiat 850 as well as the Polski Fiat 126P “Peglitza”.
I had forgotten all about the fact that the Polski Fiat was 125 based, unlike the Lada. And this explains why i occasionally got thrown off by a car sighting on my recent trip to Ecuador; Ladas (more Nivas, but quite a few of the Fiat 124 style sedans and wagons) were quite common, but sometimes I would see one that didn’t quite look right … larger, with different trim details. Of course, they must have been Polski Fiats. Unfortunately, I just went through my pictures and could only find Ladas. Here’s one, to keep with the CCC (Communists Curbside Classic) theme. Or perhaps that should be CCCC … throw Chevy in there. Taken in Guayaquil, Ecuador in May 2018.
You still see a lot of these running around Lima, Peru, but they are the Russian Lada version of the Fiat 125. Lots of sedans and station wagons, too.
Lada (Zhiguli) is derived from Fiat 124. Anyway 124 and 125 had so much common features.
About 20 years ago I visited Cuba. These cars, or ones very similar to it, seemed to be everywhere.
I rode in several of them as a passenger. I do remember that smell of gasoline in it due to gas being spilled in the trunk where the gas tank resides.
All of them seemed to be running really rich. I always stunk of exhaust after a ride in one, and I can understand why they may have relatively poor gas mileage.
Otherwise they seemed like ok, cars, they seemed to drive and handle ok
Under a collaboration of FSO and Zastava car factories, the 125 “P” had been marketed in former Yugoslavia. To keep the company’s brand identity, they’ve added a “Z” to the existing “P” which resulted in “PZ” marking on the export models of the ’70s to Yugoslavia. Folk used to call it “PeZeyats”. The front grille wore a “Z” coat of arm of the Zastava factory. The body were more or less the same as the original italian Fiat 125 which lacked the chrome stripes. The engine, the dashboard, tacho and few other features had been the same as on the old Fiat-Zastava 1300/1500 “Tristach” (Fiat Milletrecento). In the early ’80s the “Z” mark had been droped and only the “P” mark left on still marketed as Zastava 125P. Chromed features were reduced to the favor of plastic. Badge on the front grille was left “Polski Fiat”. Front fender wore a “Licencja Fiat” badge. The dash was updated to the ’80s taste.The grey pic shows the early ’70s version with more of Zastava identity.
The ’80s Zastava version. My Dad used to source this leaflet back in the day while hesitating between the Zastava-Polski Fiat 125P and Zastava-Lada 1600…
FSO stood for Fabryka Samochodów Osobowych, which had been building cars since 1951. The 125p was a replacement for the ageing Syrena and Warszawa models.
As one who doesn’t mind “hair shirts” I think these could have been world beating and profitable cars if only been built with some attention to quality control and decent steel .
I know customizers who love buying old American vehicles to get the far better quality and rust resisting steel they cut up to make their art .
The third world is always looking for the better bang for your buck only to be let down by crappy quality and rapid rusting .
-Nate
Those were very common here in Greece 30-40 years ago. Ours were mostly Fiat, not Polski, that brand had a lot of presence here, both with this car and with the 131 and the more modern Regata in the 80s-90s.