131 Diesel Rally Car

[Thotos]

Forum member Yagmur has sent in by email the photo below of the 131Diesel rally car in action.

[kev131]

Thanks Yagmur.
 
Is that an Italian registration plate?

Standard petrol engined bonnet though...?  .........Maybe they were cheating and had a 2 litre volumetrico in there...!  

[Thotos]

It seems to have the Volumetrico wheels! 

[kev131]

Maybe they were just advertisng the fact that there was a diesel model in the range...?

With a loud rally exhaust and the rarity of diesel cars on the market  (not everyone would have known what engine sound to expect) maybe they got away with a little advertising licence...! 

[mirafioriman]

It's just nice to see a four door

[parrish]

Ive seen plenty 131 diesels in Spain.
Any one know where the Diesel engine comes from? Was it a standard Diesel engine in theh rally car?

[Yagmur]

İt had a diesel engine,I think they were testing the car in the rally.
1980 Sanremo rally,driver was Carlo Cavicchi....

[Rob 131]

I remember working in Portugal in 1993 and travelling by road twice from the UK through Spain seeing  and hearing  many Diesel 131's.

I was far from impressed. They were generally all S2 Supers, and I assumed the engines were from various Donor Cars.

To me without a nice Twin Cam, it just wasn't a S2 Super.

[re30b]

Real Diesel without bump in hood 

[jseabolt]

Real Diesel without bump in hood 

If Fiat sold a diesel 131 in the US, people would be snatching them up like mad like they do all other diesel passenger cars over here so they can run their homemade bio-diesel. An old diesel Golf would at least twice what a gas powered would bring simply because 08+ diesels are not supposed to burn bio-diesel. Well a co-worker says he mixes his to a 50/50 ratio in his '09 Jetta.

Diesel passenger cars here in the US are about as rare as hearing a Cat Stevens song on an American radio station (most of his records were mass destroyed in 1989)...

[mirafiori76]

Hey jseabolt, why did they destroy the records?

[jseabolt]

Hey jseabolt, why did they destroy the records?

It was over this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

Back in 1989 after Cat Stevens (who had since converted to Islam and changed his name to Joseph Islam or something ) "endorsed" the Ayatollah Khomeini's death threat, America was in an uproar and allot of radio stations and people grouped together and had mass Cat Steven records destruction parties. And allot of radio stations refuse to play his music anymore.

This article says he did not make those comments but I was watching him say so on TV on the Today Show one morning in 1989.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens%27_comments_about_Salman_Rushdie