A single-owner car with 14,607 km on the clock and its original bodywork intact tends to arrive with a story, and the 1987 Fiat Ritmo 100S Cabrio now for sale in Palermo has kept most of its. Grey, ASI-registered, and offered as a museum piece rather than a runner, it is the kind of survivor the Ritmo was never supposed to produce. These cars rusted, wore out, and were scrapped in their tens of thousands. That one should turn up in Sicily with barely 15,000 km behind it is the whole point of the listing.
Robots built it, Bertone finished it
The Ritmo landed in 1978 as Fiat's answer to the Golf, a compact hatchback whose real novelty sat behind the design. The biggest innovation was not the car itself, which took the underpinnings of the 128, but the way it was made: Fiat built the Ritmo almost completely by robots, earning the advertising tagline "Hand built by robots." The convertible was a separate exercise. Bertone presented it at the Frankfurt show in 1979, the idea went down well, and production began at Grugliasco in 1981. After the success of the X1/9, Nuccio Bertone reworked the Ritmo base, toughened up certain areas, added a safety roll bar and created the hood mechanism. That central hoop, with body-coloured pillars and a clever folding rear window, is the car's signature. Roughly 15,544 units were built up to 1986, and the marque that made them no longer exists. Bertone, coachbuilder since 1912, is a name on old badges now.
The 1.5-litre four never pretended to be an Abarth. It gives you honest performance, a fairly agricultural gearchange, and steering the period press found heavy and vague. What the Cabrio offers instead is the sensation of a wind-in-the-hair Italian on a modest budget, the sort of thing that has quietly gone extinct. Open-topped, front-driven, naturally aspirated, analogue throughout: a small pleasure, taken slowly.
What to check before the museum label
At this age and price band, condition is the entire argument, and 19,990 EUR sits firmly at the top of what a Ritmo Cabrio commands. Early bodies lacked adequate galvanization, corroding rapidly in the wheel arches, sills and underbody panels, so those areas want careful probing regardless of the mileage claim. The Bertone-specific soft-top frame and folding-window mechanism are the other weak spot; parts are scarce and reproduction is unlikely. Add the belt-driven engine's service interval, the notoriously fragile interior trim, and the electrics that gave these cars their reputation, and the inspection list writes itself.
This is a textbook low-mileage anomaly: an ordinary mid-market car whose few remaining admirers want only the very best example, and will pay for it. The threshold for historic status passed long ago, and interest in surviving Ritmos has been building among a small, dedicated group. Whether this one earns its asking price depends on documentation the photographs cannot show, so verify the single-owner history, put the car in front of a Ritmo specialist, and inspect the underside in person before anyone reaches for the chequebook.
