The Fiat 1600S was a high performance variant of Fiat’s midsize car lineup. Based on the line of cars which began with the 1100 Sedan in 1953, which had a more traditional pushrod engine as did most of the cars in the lineup. In 1959, an agreement was entered between Fiat and OSCA, founded by the Maserati brothers after having sold their interest in Maserati to the Orsi family, for Fiat to tool up and build the 1500cc OSCA designed engine which was then used for both Fiat models and OSCA sports and race cars making it easier to meet the 500 required for racing homologation requirements. The engine was a not related to the earlier pushrod engine and featured twin overhead cams and hemispherical combustion chambers. Fiat put these engines in similar Pininfarina-designed bodywork to their 1200 Spiders and Coupes, producing higher performance, elagant cars which fit neatly between their rear engined small displacement cars and their larger cars aimed at the executive market. In 1962, the engine was enlarged and the 1600S replaced the 1500S. In 1966, the Fiat 124 was introduced with its own Lampredi-designed twin cam engine and production of the OSCA engined cars ceased. Due to the difficulty of building the engines and thus the added cost, production numbers remained low, with quoted numbers suggesting it is somewhere between 500 and 3100 cars built, of which the majority were spiders. This car was purchased by the previous owner from Europe, having been restored there to a very nice standard, and upon its arrival in the US was given to a shop local to me to ensure that it was made completely reliable and ready to take on long distance tours. I purchased this car from that previous owner along with two other cars when he decided to downsize his collection. On seeing this car for the first time, I was struck by how much it resembled my 1962 Ferrari 250 GTE, which was also a contemporary Pininfarina design and one of my favourite GT cars in the collection. As is typical of Pininfarina cars of this era, its very elegant with good, solid build quality and excellent finish. The car drives very well and the engine is particularly happy at higher revs, with a very pleasing exhaust note and decent performance. The seating position is quite comfortable and this car could easily be driven daily if one wished. The suspension and steering is essentially still that of the 1953 1100, which Fiat continued to use for the entire range of cars, but still responds reasonably well for a touring car and the gearbox shifts fairly easily, though by this point Alfa Romeo and others were already employing 5 speed gearboxes which this car would benefit from. In all it is still a pleasant car to drive and certainly a beautiful little coupe.