@Gordon Nichols posted:"Mid-engine Owners Club that is. We can explain it to them, but we can't understand it for them."
You'se guys are late-comers to the Prom.
Fiat sold their Mid-Engined X-19 way back in the 1960's. My girlfriend had one in 1969!
Umm, yeah. It's not an X-19, it's an X1/9. They weren't made until 1972(1974 first year in the USA), and my brother-in-law had a 1974 X1/9 in 1980 or so that I helped him with when I was a teenager.
1974 was the last year of the good-looking bumperettes. In 1975, they had federally-mandated UGLY bumpers. The word was that you could hit a wall at 50 mph, and open the doors and step out, such was the crash structure. I wouldn't want to test it out.
Another friend of mine had a Lancia Scorpion in the mid-80s. Those two cars probably sparked my mid-engine leanings.