A couple of weeks ago we showed you a couple of videos on this Fiat 850 Spider, a car that had originally been a restoration project, then became a property landmark when the original owner kicked the bucket. For years the car pretty much sat in a barn on a farm, collecting dust, detritus and at least one very fat possum, but eventually the car was drug out of the barn, blasted off and with some work and effort, the little engine kicked, sputtered and coughed into life. As cool as it was the last time we checked it out, we couldn’t leave it alone…we had to know how that story ended, and finally, we have the answer. The car moved, but it wasn’t happy about life. This is the episode where the little Spider gets it’s carburetor rebuilt and gets built up well enough to go sliding in the grass before it finds a new home, where it will be properly restored.

I’m digging finding these rescue and restoration videos. Automotive archeology is often the start for the inquisitive type…part of my initial curiosities in the gearhead world involved checking out dead cars in junkyards and abandoned hulks along pathways in Washington State, everything from the old car at the far end of the property that caused enough trouble to earn it’s banishment to a Maverick that had been flipped onto it’s lid and left to be covered by blackberry bushes. What had been a dirt-covered old car nobody wanted to mess with is now someone’s excitement, their new project, the one thing that they wanted badly enough that they were willing to hand over hard-earned dollars for. That’s always a cool thing to see, and I hope to see more of it this year.