Fiat Ritmo Strada
The Fiat Ritmo was introduced in 1978 as a replacement for the popular Fiat 128. Language barriers meant that the car was called the Strada in some English speaking markets. Legend has it that the reason for the name change was that "Ritmo" was a make of ladies sanitary towel in the US.
The controversial styling of the Ritmo was by Bertone.
Technologically, the biggest innovation of the Ritmo was not the car itself (which was based on the 128's running gear), but the way in which it was manufactured. Fiat, already an industry pioneer in automated assembly took the ambitious step and made the Ritmo the first car to be almost completely built by robot, earning the car the advertising tagline "Hand Assembled, by Robots". In the UK, a memorable television advert, showing the robots assembling the car to the strains of Rossini's The Barber of Seville was shown.
The so-called "Robotgate" system made the car cheaper and quicker to manufacture, but the Ritmo also suffered a terrible reputation for poor build quality, unreliability, fragile interior trim and electrical problems. The infamous "rust-bug" which afflicted most Italian cars of the 1970s and '80s also struck hard and very few Ritmos have survived the test of time. In addition, there were mechanical problems, such as the very rapid wearing of the gearbox which some owners suffered.
The resulting bad publicity severely dented Fiat's reputation in export markets, and although it was successful in its home Italian market, the car failed to make much impact elsewhere in the world. The severe rust and unreliability problems which the car was infamous for led to Fiat's withdrawal from the United States. A facelifted version debuted in 1983, and the Regata sedan version followed a year later, but it was too late to revive the car's flagging fortunes.
The Ritmo was replaced in 1988 by the Fiat Tipo.
