At first glance, Paul Smith’s 1959 Fiat 1500 OSCA looks a little like a Fiat 124 Spider, the Italian roadster familiar to sports car enthusiasts.
But wait a minute. The Fiat 124 didn’t arrive until 1967, nearly a decade after the model year of this particular car. If this isn’t a mass-produced 124, what exactly is it? And how in the heck did it find its way to a restoration shop in Virginia?
To find out, we have to set our Wayback Machine to 1959, when this rare car, a Fiat 1500 OSCA, belonged to Count Vittorio Camerana, the aristocratic head of Fiat’s advertising and marketing department and a member of the Agnelli family, the owners of Fiat. The car had been shipped to the U.S. for Camerana’s use, and also for the convenience of other Fiat executives, who when in New York City camped out at the swank Hotel Volney in Manhattan and used the 1500 for transportation about town.
One day in 1959, Camerana drove the car to a meeting with Fiat’s advertising agency, Calkins Holden. Because he was leaving New York after the meeting, he asked Paul Smith, Fiat’s account manager at the agency and a friend, to drive him to LaGuardia Airport in the 1500.
When they arrived at LaGuardia, Smith asked where Camerana wanted the OSCA taken. “Take it back to the agency, or to your house, because it’s yours,” Camerana replied.
Sure enough, a few months later the title to the car arrived from Fiat’s chief accountant, transferring ownership to Smith. It was a new year and Fiat had already shipped over a new car for Camerana and other visiting Agnelli family members, so they no longer needed the old one.
There was one slight oversight by Smith’s generous friend: The count neglected to tell Paul about the 100 unpaid New York City parking tickets in the glove box. It seems titled Italians parked wherever they wanted in those days. Smith paid off the parking tickets and kept the car, eventually giving it to his son, Paul Jr.
Son Paul drove the car for a number of years and recently decided to restore it. As with any restoration, knowledge of the model’s history was an essential ingredient in the process.
