Start with what the Fiat 125 is: a 4-door Sedan / 5-door Estate car with 1608 cc DOHC I4, built from 1967 to 1982, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. What it meant takes a little longer. 603,877 were built.
How it came about
The Fiat 125 is a large family car manufactured and marketed by Italian company Fiat from 1967 to 1972. Derivatives were built under license outside Italy until the 1990s. As launched the car was unusual in blending saloon car passenger accommodation with sports car performance, a combination which would be more widely adopted by the European volume auto-makers in the decade ahead.
The hardware
The engine is 1608 cc DOHC I4. On the scales it comes to 1055 kg. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual / (125: 1967–1973) / 5-speed manual / (125S: 1968–1970, 125 Special 1970–1973) / 3-speed automatic / (125 Special 1970–1973). The wheelbase is 2505 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Fiat line-up the Fiat 125 has a clear place: it replaced the Fiat 1500; it handed the line to the Fiat 132; the factory was Turin. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Pontiac Firebird, the Alfa Romeo Spider, the Toyota Corolla. Its Fiat stablemates include the FIAT 702 and the Fiat 1.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Fiat 125 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.