Start with what the Fiat 128 is: a 2/4-door Sedan (automobile) / saloon / 3-door Estate car / estate / 5-door estate (Argentina only) / 2-door Pickup truck / pickup (South Africa) / 2-door coupé (128 Sport Coupé) / with Petrol engine, built from 1969 to 2010, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Dante Giacosa. 3,107,000 were built.
How it came about
The Fiat 128 is a small family car which was manufactured and marketed by Fiat from 1969 to 1985. The bodystyles were a two- or four-door sedan, three- or five-door station wagon as well as two- or three-door coupé. With engineering by Dante Giacosa and engine design by Aurelio Lampredi, the 128 was noted for its relatively roomy passenger and cargo volume—enabled by a breakthrough innovation to the transversely-mounted front-engine, front-drive layout which became the layout "adopted by virtually every other manufacturer in the world" for front-wheel drive.
Fiat promoted in its advertising that mechanical features consumed only 20% of the vehicle's volume. The 128 running gear and engine, reconfigured for a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, were used in the Fiat X1/9 sports car. Named European Car of the Year in 1970, over three million were ultimately manufactured. In 2012 automotive journalist Jamie Kitman called the 128 a "pioneer of the small cars we drive today."
The hardware
The engine is Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 750 -. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2445 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Fiat line-up the Fiat 128 has a clear place: it replaced the Fiat 1100 R; it handed the line to the Fiat Ritmo / Fiat Regata; the factory was Rivalta di Torino. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Range Rover Range Rover, the Peugeot 504, the Toyota Hilux. Its Fiat stablemates include the FIAT 702 and the Fiat 1.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Fiat 128 — 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.