“Since then we’ve changed the wheels, it used to have 126 steels and now it’s running on Abarth replicas. We’ve also finished Keith’s work by fitting a passenger seat and we’ve raised the lowered suspension at the rear because the springs had been cut down too far, making the wheels rub on the arches,” says James who is quick to point out it was built in the US in the pre-internet era. In other words, parts were obtained by either mail order or from plenty of holidays to Italy, complete with large suitcases.

   “We also fitted the raised engine cover and we had to rebuild the Weber, because the seals had dried out and each time we ran it, more fuel leaked from it than went into the engine. It was just a catalogue of jobs we had to do, just to get it to run properly, but now it's fine.

   Unfortunately, the Abarth replica’s last owner did lose interest in the car and it was just left outside – leaving puddles to collect in the footwells and dents in the doors (luckily Keith took the unusual step of sheeting both the inside and the outside of the floors with a layer of GRP for rust prevention). James is reluctant to repair the dents because it would mean mismatched paint and, anyway, it adds to the 'corsa' attitude of the tiny tearaway.

   One of the big talking points are the supersized headlamps. Now, the headlamps of US-spec Cinquecentos were of a similar size to this car’s but, as with many Federalised imports such as the Moggy, the looks did take a bit of a battering as the lamps were mounted in raised pods. Speaking from memory, I could swear that I have seen period pix of Abarths sporting larger headlamps such as these, but can I find proof of this? Of course not, apart from a large nagging hunch.

   “A lot of people in the US convert the front panel, but what Keith did when he restored this was fit VW Beetle headlights and modify the front panel, which is made from a mixture of GRP and steel,” says James. “At first, I didn’t really like it, but now I do – it’s something different, having big lights on a tiny car. The bonnet used to have a roundel decal, but when we removed it, some of the paint came with it – so we had to paint the bonnet and we used the same ‘Black & White’ theme as our Giulia Spider’s bonnet.