WBH 680M

Looking back at some old photos I found some of Fulvia Sport I owned briefly in the 1980’s. I had forgotten its registration number and was pleased to be reminded that it was WBH 680M, if only so that I could inform Roddy Young so that he could put it on the Zagato Register that he maintains. I was confident that it wouldn’t be on the Register because it predated the start of the Register by Peter Pompilii and I was convinced it would have long gone to a breakers yard. I was wrong!

I bought WBH in 1986 - it was advertised in my local Freebie as a Lancia 'Zagretti' for all of £75 for a quick sale. It was a mess but I bought it and drove it home. See picture of it with my Flavia and my Beta in 1986. The tax was about to run out, but amazingly (and perhaps fraudulently!) it had a valid MOT. The petrol pump had failed and someone had rigged up an electric SU pump hanging on flexible pipes and wires with croc-clips, just to get it home. The air box had been taken off to provide room for this lash-up, but it ran!

I fixed a new pump, which was my first hands-on bit of Fulviaring, tidied it up a bit, taxed it for a year and ran it about a bit. It went like a motor-bike with lots of eager will to go fast, but it was a bit disconcerting that the gear lever seemed to rise and fall with each squirt of the throttle. When I investigated underneath all was clear. The rear sub frame mounts had disappeared up into the front end of the sills - only big rusty holes were visible! This car wasn't going to be a keeper, but it had given me an appetite for another Fulvia one day.

Before I could even think about advertising it, I had a surprise visitation by Tony Amato with his fellow friendly rogue Lionel and Lionel's eager son Jeremy - they blagged me into parting with it for a bit more than £200. Jeremy found some south London bodger to weld it up underneath - I think he welded plates to the sub-frame which he somehow welded onto the remains of the sills and what was left of the floor-pan. The other photo is of it in 1987 at one of the Syon Park events when Jeremy owned it. Shortly after this photo was taken Jeremy had a crash, with the result that he got an agreed value pay-out of £3000 (did I say lucky?) and the car was supposedly written off by the insurance company. Hence my surprise at looking it up on the Register and finding that it had another owner and later life in 1988, but not for long I suspect!

Funny how they come and go!

Colin

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