Dear group I recently have become the new custodIan of 1958 Fiat Abarth Chassis No. 508662
Engine no 556555. Unfortunately I do not think the UK DVLA will let me use the original registration plate
(WUY 400) but I live in hope.
The car in question is very interesting as it is a Mecat body and was sold to Fiat UK and is RHD possibly unique ? It was then sold via Anthony Crook of Crook Motors the UK Abarth concessionaire’s who put in
a very special AH block with SS crank and polished internals. It has also been fitted at one stage with a 1000GT Bialbero engine which I also have, but will put the AH block engine back. The car was repainted in the very early 70’s from Amaranto Roma to racing Silver which for the time being will be left the same. I am doing as minimal restoration as possible as I have been down the full restoration route many times before. These photos date from the 70’s
There is a hand-written annotation on a different ledger page from Abarth where "guida destra" has been added to the record for your Double Bubble.. We do not know if this was added initially to the build notes because a RHD Fiat 600 platform was used or if it was added a bit later once a RHD conversion was done to a LHD platform(?). Either seems possible? Fiat might be able to tell you something about this detail? Fiat 600 cars were available (at times, anyway) in RHD form. I suspect they were generally done in batches? Although uncommon, it seems that here were other RHD FIat-Abarth examples. One early 1957 Double Bubble example was born LHD and it raced a bit in Italy in that form with its first owner but became RHD during 1958 when it was sold by Abarth) to England. Each story can be its own. There are some other examples that also seem to have had the same sort of RHD origins or were converted. Others may have become converted in England by or for Tony Crook/Fiat England? At least one went from Abarth to Honk Kong and others went to South Africa. I can easily count 20 examples of various types of deriv. Fiat-Abarth 600 cars that have some sort of "guida destra" or "g.d." notation.