As you may have seen in my B4 RSK thread, I have sold Okichi to another longtime Florida Subaru enthusiast, Opie.
I definitely miss her, but I sold her for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm burned out on Subaru and I've lost all interest and enthusiasm. I also have several reasons (and some of them are personal) why Subaru has lost me as not just an enthusiast but as a customer, probably for life at this point.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
I have moved on to long-forgotten grey-market '90s European cars, and JDM cars that aren't Subarus
So, I guess, this is Okichi's replacement...
... my 1991 Fiat Croma 2.0T i.e., which a well-known car collector has told me he believes is the first to ever set tire tread down in the USA. Though it was originally sold new in Italy, it was sold to me by way of a dealer in Switzerland, oddly enough.
This is it being delivered to me after leaving port:
It has just under 54k kilometers on it, so around 33k miles. I have every reason to believe it's the nicest condition Fiat Croma left on planet Earth (unless there's one in a Fiat museum somewhere), and I'm being told by some of my European friends that Type Four Cromas are virtually all gone, even off of European roads, and that they haven't seen one roaming around in the wild for decades.
If the side profile (especially the doors) looks suspiciously familiar... it should
... like a Saab 9000.
The Fiat Croma and Lancia Thema (which were not offered in the USA) and the Alfa Romeo 164 and Saab 9000 (which were) were developed on the Type Four platform in a joint venture between Fiat and Saab.
Mine came with the famous Fiat Lampredi Twin Cam Turbo engine:
It has an RPM-dependent whining noise that I'm trying to track down... I've already done a timing belt and tensioner on it and that didn't fix anything, so I'm now going after a balance shaft bearing (it has twin counter-rotating balance shafts) or a pilot bearing.
Oh, and here's a bonus pic of it in my driveway next to my beloved Citroën XM
Anyway, this will likely be my last post on this forum. To be fair, I don't own a Subaru at all anymore, for the first time in almost 25 years, and I don't work at a Subaru dealer anymore either, so I'm also no help with parts information anymore. I will always feel like this is my automotive forum home, but life has just gotten too batshit crazy anymore, and the only time I have for forum participation anymore is for strictly technical stuff. Even as a childless bachelor, I'm pretty much going balls-to-the-wall nonstop. I'm actually writing this post while working my second job
So I wish all of you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, and if you wish to contact me for any reason, you can reach me through my social media outlets in my sig below
