1927 Fiat 509 A
| English subtitles possible . . .
A strange story, certainly not an everyday occurrence, even in 1927, the year this beautiful Fiat 509 A was born. Why? Because it took place in Brazil, which you can easily tell from the Portuguese subtitles.
Feel free to try and have the subtitles translated, but we promise you that in the end you will be happy that this text is here after a little longer research. Truly, Brazil is not necessarily a Fiat country.
If you hadn't paid attention to the year of manufacture and asked about VW or trucks from Mercedes, then you would have come to the right place. But Fiat seems to belong more to neighboring Argentina. However, there was
a factory there not before 1954 onwards.
A coffee grower from Campinas, northwest of Sao Paulo, fell in love with a friend's Fiat and tried to get his hands on such a car, although at that time he could only order it via the headquarters in Turin.
And this is exactly where something went wrong. We can assume, he ordered the friend's Fiat and therewhith a much more powerful model. But just this 509 A was delivered, the type designation has just been changed and
it has the 'A' now.
The car presented was a torpedo. It was also delivered as a Berlina, Coupe, Cabrio, Spider, Landaulet and Weymann, which suggests a vinyl roof. Whether these were the harbingers of the crisis in 1925/26, it was powered
by a 1 liter four-cylinder engine.
In order to get enough torque out of it, it was designed to have a very long stroke. And the nominal speed had been increased to increase performance. Another special feature of this engine was the overhead camshaft with
drive from the flywheel side, which is by no means common.
And how is it that the car still looks so good despite being almost 90 years old? The liability for delivering the wrong car was somehow resolved only after 25 years. The Brazilian coffee grower has not driven it during this
long time.
But the tragedy continued. Because when they finally wanted to register the car after changing ownership and putting it into operation, the legislation had changed in 1956. There would probably have been a solution for the
missing rear bumper, but probably not for the conversion to left-hand drive.
And so it happend that the car has only run 2,752 km to date. A stroke of luck for us because it is practically still in delivery condition. The 'restorer' then explains with great expertise how, for example, to constrict the air in the
engine in order to give it the richer mixture needed to start.
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