Located in Campania, Italy, the small town called Pratola Serra hosts an engine factory. The engines built there are also referred to as Pratola Serra engines. Some fantastic 4- and 5-cylinder Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia engines were built in that factory. The one I will be talking about is the 2.0 litre, 5-cylinder 20-valve Fiat engine (obviously with the firing order 1-2-4-5-3, as the title suggests).
It was the first months of 1999, and it was my junior year at the university. I had parted from my 1992 mark II ED9 Honda CRX 1.6i-16 since I felt that I was not going to be able to afford the next wave of investments on that lovely car. I was really looking for a new car. In Turkey, the cars with the model year 2000 were about to be on sale on all brands, and the new car prices were really high. I was ready to settle for a small car with performance figures far from those of the CRX. Then I saw it at the Fiat dealer in Ankara. It was a white Fiat Bravo HGT, model year 1998, which they hadn’t been able to sell for about a year and a half. It was priced even less than a 1.4 Honda Civic, and it looked stunning! I signed the contract and took it home. The engine – it sounded in a way I never heard before. I had been in cars with V6 and V8 engines, but this was different. The imperfection, imbalance of 5 cylinders, almost perfectly balanced by dedicated counter-rotating balance shafts. So beautiful that, to this day, I am missing it.
It was one of the hot hatches of its time, but it was rare in the sense that it had more than 4 cylinders. In the 20th century BMW did not have the 1 series, nor did Mercedes-Benz have the A-class. Audi had the S3, but with a 4-cylinder turbocharged engine. This was different; the only similar alternatives were being offered by Volkswagen in the form of Golf Mark IV in v5 and R32 variants. However, and I may be heavily biased, but neither of those VW models sounded near as good as the engine on the Bravo HGT.
The wonderful 2.0 20v engine was used by Fiat in Bravo HGT, Marea HLX and the Coupé. The naturally aspirated version produced 147 HP and later a 155 HP version was rolled out. The Coupé also had a turbocharged version which produced 220 HP. The engine was also used in some Lancia models of the time; namely the Kappa, Lybra and Thesis models.
Coming from the light and powerful CRX, the fantastic throttle response of the Bravo HGT was not something that impressed me a lot. However, what I certainly noticed was the torque. The official top speed was 210 km/h; same as the Honda CRX. However, on the highway connecting Ankara with Istanbul, I could comfortably cruise at 180 km/h uphill, and downhill the car could reach an indicated speed of 240 km/h. Did I mention how beautiful the engine sounded?
One afternoon, with less than 5000 km. on the clock, I saw the cooling water temperature gauge hitting the redline. What happened was the holing of the cooling water pipe, which apparently occurred due to chafing of the coolant pipe against electric harnesses. I immediately thought, I would never see this kind of thing in a Japanese car. Maybe I was right, but what I did not know was how to appreciate the Italian way of thinking, in which this sort of problems was of almost no importance, and all the focus would be on the styling, handling, engine response – in short, elements of driving pleasure. Those little flaws – like the ones we all have as humans – give the machine a human quality; a spirit.
After graduation from the university in 2000, I went to the States for MSc. studies. I sold the car just a few days before I left my country. With a sudden decision, I came back from Boston in 5 days, without registering to the MSc programme. I did not like my new environment and there was no point to stay any longer. The downside was that I did not have my Bravo HGT anymore and I never had the opportunity of owning another Italian car again. But then, never say never…