When I first showed a Coupé to my young son and said I was going to buy one he thought I was mad! "Dad why do you want such an ugly car?"

I think the Coupe will be eclipsed by other performance cars as collectors items. Collectors cars are the cars boys wanted in their teens. The Coupe always had limited appeal, and will not see the levels that Evos and Scoobies make in the future.

Look at the old 70's coupes - another 20 years to go BUT one day all old Italian cars are valuable because old Italian cars are cool.

Some highlights for me were seeing an original Alfasud with only a few miles on the clock, and seeing a mint Coupe just like mine at Stanford Hall with only 18,000 miles on it.

Cars are for *driving*. I don't care if it's the rarest, or oldest, or most expensive car in the world; if it's not driven it's nothing more than pretty metal. Low mileage (old) cars are pointless.

I think the Coupe will be eclipsed by other performance cars as collectors items. Collectors cars are the cars boys wanted in their teens. The Coupe always had limited appeal, and will not see the levels that Evos and Scoobies make in the future.

Given the difficulty in obtaining new spares already, breaking cars to keep others on the road will be increasingly the norm.

My TR6 was a teenage want, (as indeed was a Stag - McMikes looks ). It was obviously a shared want, becuase they have a healthy collectors scene although to be fair they didn't have much competiton at the time. The huge advantage it has is that provided you have opposoble thumbs, most of the maintenace is easy.

I notice Escort Cossies are going for significantly more than Coupes already, despite both being 90s high performance cars. Because, IMO more teenagers wanted Cossies than Coupes.

Unlike Integrales, Cossies, Evos, Scoobies etc there is no sporting cache attached to the Coupe to raise it's profile and end up on a bedroom wall.

Unless there is a healthy collectors market there will be no interest in manufacturing spares. FIAT don't seem interested. So the odd collector who lusted after one won't be able to afford to sort one. They are expensive to maintain now, wait until spares totally dry up.

Unduly pessimistic? Possibly.

I use my Coupe every day, all year round, I have no choice.
I don't have the luxury of a second/company car to travel to work every day (80 mile round trip).
And as money or lack of it in my wallet, I rely on people breaking Coupes and selling on.

I love what Duffy has done to his Coupe and only wished I had the time and money to do that to mine. Lets see what the future brings (Hope,pray).

I will just say that I do travel to work with a big smile on my face.

What a fantastic thread

Far too many FCCUK threads seem to be about how much power you can get from the Coupé and how much money you can make from taking a Coupé to bits. It is refreshing to see threads about restoring and bringing them back to life, or better than new in this case.

It is good to see more and more threads like this appearing on our forum and it is about time they began to challenge all the tunning, HP hero, and break them for cash threads.

When the place that is supposed to be all about loving the Coupé has more threads about destroying them than restoring them you begin to understand why the Coupé will always struggle to be regarded as a classic.

At this years Auto Italia concours event at Stanford hall there were NO Coupés entered in the concours event and far less than ten in attendance, or on display. Yes on the day the weather was bad but in the run up to the event fewer than ten people showed any interest.

I accept that the Coupé is a fantastic little track weapon and that it can be tunned for fantastic budget performance. I question though if perhaps the club, and by the term club I mean the members not the board, are driving the club in the right direction?

This is why I stopped coming on this forum because all people talk about is power, then when the car is broken break it to get their money back, I for one hope this forum can start to go in the direction the coupe deserves, it is a classic in the making and some day prices will rise.
And it's so not in the same class as scoobys and evo's they are chav cars the coupe is an Italian GT and deserves respect it's a modernish fiat Dino coupe (for those that know what they are without Google).
You should never own a car like the coupe if you can't afford to lose money on it, they are not there for sensible people they are there to be loved and driven by real petrol heads.

Look at the old 70's coupes - another 20 years to go BUT one day all old Italian cars are valuable because old Italian cars are cool.

Italian GT and deserves respect it's a modernish fiat Dino coupe