Bad Reputation - Fiats

[1985spiderautomatic]

Well the 1976 fiat 124 spider is not the best year.The reason being the electrical relays mounted under the driver side of the hood.It seems like beer was much better and stronger in those days,because buddies would come over to help and a case of beer and wire cutters was the fix.
Never met a 1976 i liked and my wife is a 1964.
The wiring was the only issue, the rest of the fiat is a great car.
Just look around how many amc pacers do you see?
There are no mass produced 1976s of any marque on the road.They made millions of them,fiat made 100.000 at most.
Your driving it?Gotta be better then the new fords i fix,6lt, you need 3 trucks at 60k each,one broke,one dead on the road and one to drive.Just a thought,could be wrong.

[Yadkin]

Yeah that forest of relays is problematic, but like a lot of the cars features, ahead of its time. Back then most cars still has high amp switches on the dash. Today no one does, but the relays are all neatened up in one box.

A common upgrade on classic cars is to install a new power panel, complete with relays, under the hood to eliminate the fire hazard of high amp dash controls.

[Nanonevol]

From what I've read there were some changes in '77 such as no extra in-line fuses besides the fuse box. Did my car have a bunch of relays under the hood when new? I also don't seem to have those ground pods under the hood I've seen on other Spiders.