The Crappiest Car Lamborghini Ever Made Helped Save The Company

What do you think is the least great Lamborghini built? The Italian manufacturer has made a lot of different cars, sports cars, supercars, but not all of them are as brilliant as the astonishingly beautiful Miura, the angular and breathtaking Countach, or the legendary Diablo – or the front-engined coupes the company built in the early days. It’s easy to nominate the Urus, which is a sort of a blend of an Audi SUV and a Pontiac Aztek, but there’s one Lamborghini-built car that doesn’t necessarily come to mind first.

It’s the Fiat 127 Rustica. It’s a small, three-door hatchback on steel wheels, only sold in one color, with a tiny four-cylinder engine producing just 50 horsepower. However, while it was a cheap crapcan and didn’t even wear Lamborghini badging, it was one of the most important cars the company built, as in the late 1970s it had no other option.

Lamborghini Against The World

Lamborghini had a tough time in the 1970s. At first, it was developing a successor for the Miura and presented the first Countach show car at Geneva in 1971. The process to get the Countach out there in the hands of customers was arduous, and it wasn’t helped by the tractor manufacturing side of Lamborghini facing cancelled orders in Africa and South America, depleting the company’s funds.

The company was in dire straits even before the 1973 oil crisis hit in full force, and the company’s founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini, had already been forced to sell just over half of the company’s stocks a year earlier. In 1974, he sold the rest and retreated to his estate.

The Countach reached the production stage that year, and it initially sold in tiny numbers, as it wasn’t certified for official export to the U.S. The company started looking into military vehicles and contract manufacturing, while building the cheaper Urraco and planning its successor, the ill-fated Silhouette, which was launched in 1976, but just over 50 of those were built, and assembly quality wasn’t great. Lamborghini was also so skint that it asked for full payment upfront before even beginning to build the car for the customer, instead of selling complete cars.

The first prototype of what would eventually become the Rambo Lambo, the LM002, was initially devised as the Cheetah in 1977, but despite taking up vital development funds, just a single driveable Cheetah proto was completed, and it took almost a decade for the LM002 to be unveiled.

At first, Lamborghini assisted BMW in developing the mid-engined M1 sports car. The tubular steel space-frame chassis of the M1 was designed by the race car builder Gianpaolo Dallara at Lamborghini, and initial plans called for the M1 to be built there, as there would have to be 400 road cars to meet homologation rules.

The stricken company was in no position to fulfill that, however, as Lamborghini was only able to complete seven prototype M1s. BMW soon took the project back home, with a bunch of Lamborghini engineers finishing the design under their own Italengineering company, and Italdesign assembling the bodies in Turin from space frames built by yet another company, Marchesi, in Modena. Finishing the cars was subcontracted to Baur in Stuttgart, the company known for its curious-looking convertible conversions and later Porsche 959 assembly.

The Solution Is Crossovers

So, in 1978 Lamborghini was screwed and bankrupt, with its possibilities slipping through its fingers and other companies doing the work it was supposed to. It was put under judicial administration to keep it from going completely under, which meant every chance to keep the company running was considered. In 1979, Lamborghini’s engine wizard and consultant, Giulio Alfieri of Maserati fame, concocted a plan with Fiat, inadvertently creating what is an incredibly commonplace type of vehicle these days: the front-wheel-drive crossover hatchback.

Think about it. In the last decades, there have been a ton of different family cars sold with slightly raised ride height, sturdier bumpers, and some sort of sand colored paint. For an Italian company to bring those out nearly half a century ago is nothing but pioneering.

This was the late 1970s, with Italy going through its Anni di Piombo, the years of lead. Political unrest, industrial action, assassinations, kidnappings … generally A Tough Time for everyone involved. Still, Fiat kept churning out some of its best-known cars, including the small but very versatile 127, which had been introduced in 1971 and awarded the European Car Of The Year victory in 1972. It only took three years for Fiat to build the one millionth 127 in Turin, and by 1976 Fiat had brought 127 production to South America, as the 147.

The car’s design was altered slightly with a taller hood, and it also became the first modern car to run E100 ethanol instead of gasoline, as a result of the oil crisis and plentiful sugar production in South America. The 147’s engine was larger than the 127’s 903cc unit, as it mostly relied on the South American specification 1050 engine referred to as the FIASA. In other words, it was toughened up for the new continent, much in the same way as the Fiat 124 sedan was transformed into the Lada to cope with Russian roads. Importantly, by that time the 127 and 147 were true hatchbacks, as the 127 had originally been introduced with a tiny trunk lid hinged below the rear window, not above it.

Lamborghini Cooks Up The Fiat 127 Rustica

Alfieri convinced Lamborghini and its controllers that the company could take the 147, dress it up a bit, and produce it as a car tailored for customers living in mountainous areas. The Rustica didn’t get four-wheel drive, but the taller ground clearance, sturdier suspension, and metal bumpers suited farmers looking for a cheap car, and a Fiat 128 gearbox with a shorter final ratio helped the car get up steeper hills. It also weighed around 100lbs more than a basic 127.

To make it look even more credible, the headlights and taillights were fitted with thick protectors, and a roof rack was bolted on top, with a skid plate protecting the engine’s sump. The tires were also chunkier, on black steel wheels. It looked great.

The only color on offer was a functional-looking semi-matt beige, like on a military truck, and the interior was finished in brown vinyl. All in all, the Rustica (Italian for, uh, rustic) was purposeful, like a 127 would have put on work boots and jeans. However, future hipsters and trendsetters that would love the Rustica weren’t even born yet, even if the Italian fashion company Diesel, which relies on a similar chunky aesthetic, was founded around that time.

Later in 1982, Fiat brought out the Panda’s 4×4 variant, which built on what the Rustica was about, but using a Steyr-Puch-developed four-wheel-drive system that was perfect for rural customers.

During 1979 and 1980, the Lamborghini plant in Sant’Agata Bolognese produced some 5,000 Fiat Rusticas. While the regular 127 was made in far greater numbers, this kept the company going long enough for it to be guided into the hands of the Swiss Mimran brothers, who initially administrated the company and later bought it outright to restructure it.

The Mimrans funded the company, turned it around, got the Countach in shape to be imported into the United States officially instead of via grey imports, and eventually sold the whole deal to Chrysler in 1987.

These moves, including developing the cheaper Jalpa out of the initially-not-great Silhouette, and bringing the LM002 into a revitalized 1980s market, saved Lamborghini and were essential for it to survive to the present day. But it’s incredible that a humble, no-nonsense, front-wheel-drive Fiat hatchback kept the lights on when times were at their worst.

And in a way, the Urus is doing the same for the company as the Rustica did: these days it just takes a far bigger SUV to improve profitability.

Today, it’s not easy to find a 127 Rustica for sale, as they were only made for a couple of years and presumably used up in mountain goat duties, like a lot of Pandas were.

There’s a near-flawless, recently restored one for sale in Rome for ten grand, and while that’s a lot of money, the car looks to be in excellent condition with new paint and reupholstered vinyl seats. The odometer reading is said to be 15,500 km (around 10k miles), but since these things have five-digit odos, that’s probably moot.

(Images: Fiat unless otherwise noted)