Well, for better or for worse, good idea or bad, it's here. In due course I may well be banging my head on the desk wondering why I bothered, but sometimes you just have to go for it. Having read up all I can find I'm pretty confident I have sufficient info in terms of documents, photos etc to put together to support a NOVA application, so that will be the homework for this week. I'm told the car was brought over here to be broken for spares, with the engine destined for a 126 project until the owner discovered some fundamental differences that made it impossible (like the fact that rear mounted engines in the 126 rotate the opposite way).
So here are some photos of the car, which is very dirty inside and out, with an underside liberally plastered in mud from either Lincolnshire or Poland. There's also an impresive dent in one sill. The inner sills are solid at the rear and the boot corners are fine. The 700cc engine is really - it's mounted longitudinally - but then again it is only half the length of a 4 cylinder unit. The spark plugs looks pretty inaccessible.
The interior is interesting with part-vinyl seats, which we never saw over here, along with plain grey vinyl door inserts. Rear seat passengers are treated to featureless hardboard trim panels. The Cinquecento branded fitted mats are a bit of a bonus... and you've got to love the air freshener.
The car starts (eventually) drives and stops, but before anything else, it needs a massive clean up.
Steve