Talk:Fiat 131

World Rally Championship

To KieranT regarding your edit summary of 11:15, October 6, 2006 — Walter Röhrl was the top works Fiat driver in 1980. In 1978 he competed in six races, winning two. In 1977 he competed twice in a Fiat 131 and three times in an Opel Kadett, retiring on every occasion. Other notable works Fiat drivers were Timo Salonen and Markku Alén. I'd probably remove the parenthetical statement, as it really only relates to the 1980 season and downplays others' contributions. Here's an external link to Röhrl's results. --DeLarge 15:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, DeLarge, I'll do as you suggest with the brackets, and add the external link as a reference for that. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 16:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Engines

The first two series had also OHV engines:1297 ccm and 1585 ccm,not SOHC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.49.197.81 (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

the first series (1974) had only pushrod engines, 1.3 and 1.6 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.35.94.19 (talk) 14:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

http://www.carsfromitaly.net/ says :

• Mirafiori 1297cc (65bhp) & 1585cc (75bhp)(both sohc)
• Familiare 1297cc & 1585cc
• Abarth 1995cc (140bhp) (dohc)

--— Typ932^{T | C}  14:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The camshafts of the 131's OHV engines were not chain driven. The 131 was the first car to have a toothed belt drive for a pushrod valve gear.

Car class classification

The Fiat 131 wasn't a small family car, it was a large family car.You can compare it's size, engines and quality with others and you will see it was a Larege familly car, it was replaced wrongly by the Regata when Fiat started to replace large family cars by 3 volume derivatives of small family hatchbacks. Is predecessor, the 124 was also a large family car, altough one with smaller dimensions. The 124 was the substitute of the 1300, that had the same body of the 1500.

Small family cars of that era 1974-1983 were the Golf, Kadett, Escort, Corolla, Horizon, Allegro, Alfasud, Renault 14, Civic and neither of them competed with the 131. It's competitors were the Passat, Ascona, Taunus/Cortina, 1307/Solara, 305, Renault 18, Giulietta, Alfetta, Beta, Audi 80 and others of that segment

ACamposPinho 00:31, 25 May 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.196.128.122 (talk)

Some original pictures

Dashboard Fiat 131 1st series

Dashboard Fiat 131 2nd series

Fiat 131 2nd series

May be you like some pictures of the 131 in his time more than such from exhibitions: -- Tasma3197 13:42, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Very nice. I introduced the dashboard photos to the article, I think we have plenty of exterior views at the moment. Thanks,  ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃  (talk) 14:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The otherwise conventional dashboard of these cars had a very advanced feature: it was the first car to use a large bulb conveniently mounted under the dashboard and fibre optics to illuminate the switches and heater control unit in the dashboard.

Foreign markets

I've just added information, that final assembly of Fiat 131 was also done by the FSO in Warsaw. This information is to find, for example, in book "Opowieść o FSO - Historia tej warszawskiej fabryki": http://pelta.osdw.pl/ksiazka/OPOWIESC-O-FSO-HISTORIA-TEJ-WARSZAWSKIEJ-FABRYKI,peltaGAQ36FYA
And here is cover of handbook to second series of Fiat 131p: http://motoallegro.pl/fiat-131p-mirafiori-cl-i-mirafiori-l-i1517510277.html#gallery StanislasB 15:48 (CEST)

Quality problems

I owned one of these cars, and it was unbelievably bad in terms of mechanical reliability. Other owners have said the same thing. I believe at one point in time the readers of Popular Mechanics voted it the worst car of all time, but I can't find the citation. I believe it was quality problems with this car that drove Fiat out of business in the USA for over 30 years. Does anyone know of citations for these claims? Thanks. Newell Post (talk) 03:03, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

No because these were very reliable cars, driven many of these, the bad time of Fiat was 10 years later -->Typ932 ^T·C 03:34, 26 August 2012 (UTC)