Back when this Spider first rolled off the production line, our father was managing a busy main Fiat dealership. Returning alongside his boss (Paul Caston) from a disappointingly unsuccessful buying trip to the continent in 1982, they stopped for lunch in Belgium where they spotted this little roadster gleaming, brand-new, in a showroom. Maybe the lunch had been of the liquid variety (this was the motor trade in the 1980s!) but it was swiftly decided this was the perfect car for any self-respecting Fiat-dealership-owner. The car was immediately purchased, with the drive home excitedly split between the two. Paul took the first stint through Belgium onto the ferry but then, unsure of driving a LHD car on UK roads, our dad finished the journey from Felixstowe back home to Norwich.

The car has remained in the same hands ever since and played an important role in both mine and Luke’s nascent fascination with Italian cars. We would often take trips to work with dad during school holidays, and next to the Uno Turbos and the Tipo Sedicivalvoles, we were both fascinated by the ‘cardboard box brown’ Spider and its exotic badging. In fact, it was that memorable jaunt back from the docks in this very car that inspired our father to buy his own 124 Spider - a 2.0 Turbo built for the US market by Legend Industries.

If you’re looking at the pictures thinking to yourself that the Pininfarina Spidereuropa looks a lot like a Fiat 124 Spider, then you’d be right. In 1982, with the big-wigs of Fiat and Lancia wanting a big shake up of their range, the rights to produce the perennial roadster were handed over to Pininfarina (just like the palming off of the X1/9 to Bertone). The styling gurus set about removing some of the American influence that the 124 had been weighed down with over the years; replacing the intrusive oversized bumpers with the elegant chrome flourishes, de-restricting that glorious 2.0 Lampredi twin-cam and removing the perfunctory nod towards a rear seat entirely. This is, once again, a proper Italian sportscar.