Alex Unleashed on Cars

Fiat has many ups and downs over its lifespan. On the one hand, you have forgettable and poorly built drivel like the Stilo, Multipla facelift and Doblo. But then you also have the 124, Panda, 500 and of course, the Coupe. Fiat’s Coupe really did define the era that gave us almost too many affordable coupes to choose from, everyone from Alfa Romeo to Volvo had a coupe for you, with varying degrees of excellence, from Ford’s Puma and the VW Corrado down to the Vauxhall Calibra and Alfa Romeo GTV. First thing you have to talk about the Fiat Coupe is the looks. I’m not it’s biggest fan, but I do think it is very striking indeed as did a lot of people when it was first unveiled in ’92, it caused quite a stir, I mean you’ve got the slashes along the wheel arches, the rather butch looking front end and inside you get a strip running across the dashboard with pininfarina in the middle. But what is even more interesting is it’s chief designer, Chris Bangle. The man who was hounded for his ...

  The year was 1996 and a certain someone had lined up an Aston Martin Vantage, a Porsche 911 Turbo, Lotus Esprit V8, Caterham 7 JPE, Dodge Viper RT/10 and a TVR Cerbera for a 1 mile drag race. In the end, the ballsy coupe from Blackpool took a decisive win. I bring up this story because it’s just one of several events that propelled the Cerbera to fame. The second was a year later, when the TVR faced an even bigger challenge than a turbocharged Porsche, a Panavia Tornado jet. Yes, long before Richard Hammond raced a Bugatti Veyron against a Eurofighter, Top Gear Magazine had a TVR race a Tornado. And lost. But not by much! These 2 events for me sum up the Cerbera, an underdog from (until then) a small brand from a seaside town capable of great things, taking the fight to cars far more expensive and exclusive. The general consensus among road testers was you’d need at least £300,000 to beat a Cerbera in a straight line. When first being conceived, the Cerbera was originally goi...