I owned a Fiat 128 once. Had it a year. Bought it with 14K on the clock, sold it a year later with 16K on it. It once ran for 3 weeks straight without breaking down.
Every cable in it was made from overcooked spaghetti. You could use the heater/defroster once. If you shut it down, the next time you tried to put it on, the cable would just stretch. That was it. That, and the fact that the wiper fuse would blow with more than 3 snowflakes on the windshield made it undriveable in the winter, in the northeast. Driving to my girlfriend's house on day, I put the clutch in, and the pedal stayed on the floor. Linkage snapped. My girlfriend was a real lightweight. Maybe 115 pounds soaking wet. She loved driving a stick, so one night I let her drive to the movies. She sat on the edge of the seat to tie her sneaker, and the next thing I know, she and the seat were both laying in the parking lot. The bolts holding it to the floor just snapped. I can imagine what would have happened in any kind of an accident.
Luckily, my uncle was a mechanic, and as an added bonus, he could speak and read Italian schematics, so he was able to keep that absolute of [censored] running, at least temporarily. We sized the seat for me, and he welded it to the floor. I don't know whether I ever let anyone sit in the passenger seat afterwards.
Yeah, I was ready to run out and buy a Yu-dont-go when I learned that it was a re-badged 128.
And if you're flying to Europe, and want to see something that re-defines the term cluster [censored], try making a tight connection at Charles de Gaulle airport, if you have to change terminals. JFK at its worst was a model of efficiency by comparison.
