We've had this Tipo since 1995 and in most respects its been fine except for the apparent sensitivity of the throttle and the feeling that the engine/gearbox moves backwards and forwards too much when going on and off the gas. This is bad enough on the move, but on take-off it feels like the engine moves to such an extent that is affecting (closing) the throttle opening; the car has always been a pig to drive smoothly and the only way to move off reliably is to rev the nuts off it otherwise the engine just bogs as the clutch is taken up. It's been the same since new and despite several attempts to get it fixed no one seems to know what I'm talking about even though the problem is clear from damage to the bulkhead caused by impact from the cylinder head (though not when I'm driving it!). Why am I bothering now? Because my daughter's learning to drive and it's unfair to subject her to this.

I've had the engine mountings replaced and if anything its worse. Its so bad that the only thing I can think of is that an engine brace may not have been fitted during manufacture, but I don't know where to look. It reminds me of Minis when the bushes in the brace between the block and the bulkhead used to fail.

Any ideas?

I had a similar problem with my Panda some years ago, the gear cloche used to move forward and backward during accelerations[}], but it had been solved by replacing the gearbox mounting, the engine's ones were good!

I have the same problem on my Fiat 124 Spider. The engine moves when you first rev it, then as the drive train takes up the load, the engine moves back closer to idle position, but you still have accelerator down, causing engine to move again and you end up with a "Kangarooing effect".

The problem is that the engine does most of its movement at a critical rpm, unfortunately close to the revs that you would normally use to pull away. Thus, giving alot of revs and letting engine do its movement and then letting clutch out helps drive smoothly.

A fix is to get some good quality rubber discs and lift engine mount about 1 inch on the side that the top of engine moves away from when you rev it. I got some mud guards mad of a rubbery plastic, and cut 3 discs out. I then loostened the engine mount nut and jacked engine up so that it came away from mount. Then, I added the padding and let engine back down. All in all about 15 mins work.

The reason that it worked is that it took away the sharp engine movement at pulling away revs and made it so that the engine moved when already accelerating. It was not noticeable then.

It worked for me anyway.

Doesn't your car use a cable or a rod for accelerator linkage. If its a cable, then I wouldn't expect you to have this problem