It tends to feel a bit empty in Renson Close (or Norwich’s Little Italy, as it’s come to be affectionately known) without a Fiat Coupe or two. We absolutely adore these fantastic cars and have worked on and sold countless variations over the years, so we were only too pleased when we booked this Portofino Blue 20V Turbo in recently.

Its new owner had only just purchased it and the very first thing he wanted to treat it to was a full italicar check-up. It was definitely a great find (we’re very jealous, in fact), having covered just 56k miles from new with a decent wedge of service history. However, the last record of a new timing belt was way back in 2012 - so that was our first port of call for him.

The urban myths of the engine having to come out when fitting a new cambelt on the five-cylinder Coupes can once-and-for-all be filed under Fake News; but it’s still a massively important job. Our rule of thumb is that you need to renew it every 50k miles or five years for a 20v, while we wouldn’t personally push a Lampredi twin-cam 16v powered model beyond 36k miles or 3-years. It’s not the cheapest of jobs, but it’s definitely going to hurt the wallet a lot less than rebuilding an engine if it fails.

After we had peace of mind that this was sorted, we gave this Porto’ Coupe a full service and checked everything over.