This year, the car brand will celebrate its 120th birthday. This former king of European caravans actually has a very rich and wonderful history, but in recent years, the too gentle, cute, and homely product style has almost made people forget the crazy side of Fiat.
In 1910, Fiat built the S76, a car designed to beat the Blitzen Benz (mercedes-benz, but not Mercedes-Benz) for the title of "fastest car on land".
To get enough power to break the land speed record at the time, Fiat used an in-line 4-cylinder engine with a displacement of 28.35 liters. No, I'm not mistaken, it's really 28 liters, to be precise, the cylinder capacity is 28353 cubic centimeters, and the maximum power is 290 horsepower.
Just look at this piston to see why 4 cylinders can have a displacement of more than 28 liters.
The 190mm bore and 250mm stroke meant that this engine wouldn't have amazing speeds, but as long as the horsepower was enough. In fact, looking at the body structure, suspension and wheels of the S76, you can see that the control of this car will not be too good. Can you imagine what a four-wheeled bike with 290 horsepower looks like? That's pretty much it.
So when the famous Italian driver Felice Nazzaro first tested the S76, which was 3.8 meters long, 1.3 meters wide and weighed 1.7 tons but had 290 horsepower, he gave the conclusion that it was "uncontrollable". Fiat's own S76 can't find a driver to drive, but it can sell the rest. In 1911, Russian Prince Boris Soukhanov bought a second S76 with the intention of breaking the land speed record.
But the terrible mechanical nature of the S76 left the Russian prince running into a wall on his way to find a driver, until he met the American Arthur Duray. In December 1913, the prince came to Ostende, Austria, with his car and the brave Arthur, to try to break the land speed record. The S76 ran at a speed of 132.27 mph (about 213 km/h) in one test run, but unfortunately failed to run in the opposite direction in the next 1 hour, so the record was not recognized.
Ostend,1913
Although the car did not officially become the fastest car in the world, the strength it possessed and the speed at which it could be achieved were shocking, and those who had seen the car run said that the S76 was really terrible, not only because of its shape, but also because of its terrible noise.
Let's watch a video.
The S76 appearing in the video was handcrafted by collector Duncan Pittaway using the engine of the first S76 and the chassis of the second S76 according to Fiat's drawings of that year. Listen to the sound of it shaking as it moves, you can see why the Italians gave the car the nickname "La Belva di Torino" to the Beast of Turin.
Today's Fiat, although it has said goodbye to record-setting and even motorsport for many years, has obviously still had a feeling for speed and driving, otherwise it would not have launched the Abarth 695 Biposto a few years ago, a hardcore performance car (a high-powered Fiat 500 production car that has almost completely lost almost all its interior and requires two-foot clutch shifting).
If you're interested in the story of the S76's refurbishment, you can click "Read the Original Article," where a photographer named Stefan Marjoram documented the process in detail.
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