Car & Automotive

Here’s What It Really Cost to Get Car Bibles’ Cheap Fiat Abarth Driving Nicely

Michael J. Moody July 18, 2021

After an exciting weekend at Radwood Norcal, Car Bibles is back to blogs as usual with updates on project cars, important legal information for tuners, some history, used car commentary, and did we mention project cars?

© Provided by The Drive
After an exciting weekend at Radwood Norcal, Car Bibles is back to blogs as usual with updates on project cars, important legal information for tuners, some history, used car commentary, and did we mention project cars? We had quite a few good ones this week! Our report on California’s smog requirements changing got a lot […]

We had quite a few good ones this week! Our report on California’s smog requirements changing got a lot of traction thanks to a wide share on Reddit, but we had some good updates on our own cars that I hope you’ll dig too.

Car Bibles is generally focused on DIY-related content, practical advice, cultural commentary, and automotive entertainment celebrating low- to medium-budget motoring. We’ve stepped up our schedule to six posts a day each week — including a daily feature photo–so if you like what you see below, I would love to see you over on our site to check out the rest of it! Anyway, on to the roundup:

Kevin Williams got his hands on a Fiat Abarth that had an apparently blown engine and a host of other problems. Usually, jobs like this only get worse the deeper you go, but Williams has actually been pretty lucky. Not only has this car been relatively easy to work on, but even after a big host of repairs, he’s still in good financial shape with it.

On July 19, 2021, just a few days from now, California will start checking ECUs for smog compliance. You can expect a big update on the specifics on The Drive soon, but meanwhile, you should give this rundown post a look to get a sense of where things are at.

Even growing up in the northeast, I can’t say I was familiar with the term “dubber” before reading this article. Take a peek at a piece of sport compact history from the not-too-distant past here.

Kevin Williams’ next buy-fix-resell project is a humble Honda Civic. Yeah, the beat-up body accounts partially for the low price. But the real reason he got it so cheap is that the engine suffered a catastrophic malfunction that was shockingly common in these cars. It’ll need a lot of bodywork and a new powerplant before it can be sent along to its next owner.

There’s been boundless hype about the new Bronco and its off-road abilities, but the little Bronco Sport is apparently surprisingly impressive off-road too. Peter Nelson and Chris Rosales took one up to an off-road park north of Los Angeles and beat it up a little bit to see what it could do.

This is just a really cool short film about a really cool car. An E46 Wagon is sweet on its own, making it M3 powered is amazing, and then taking that setup and making it all-wheel drive to come up with a unique German rally wagon? I mean, wow.

I couldn’t not re-up this post because, my God, I’m still in shock that we found a 4Runner listed for $80,000. Car prices are whack right now, yeah, but Toyota trucks are heading to another stratosphere. Plus I wanted an excuse to share this illustration I made. Cute, right?

If you liked any of those stories, I hope you’ll join us on the regular over at Car Bibles. Our comment section’s always open and we’ll be doing a lot of experimenting throughout the year as we look for new and fun ways to bring automotive entertainment to you.