This is the part where everything is coming together again. Even though this car has spent most of its life in Southern California – they had almost no rust protection and the body shop had to insert new metal in the doors, floors and trunk areas. From there it went to paint and for me, this is always THE most painstaking process. I oversee every aspect but am not always there to 100% check things so sometimes they have to change things which are not as “factory correct” as I want it to be. It starts with a special etching primer which is shot right onto the sheet metal, followed by a high-grade filler they can use to make the flat sides of this Fidia absolutely straight. That said, mostly my work also means to do it BETTER than the factory and the paint system is a good example of that. Once our paint system and undercoating (my special recipe to imitate Iso’s system to a tee) is applied, the exterior of any Iso is way better protected than any factory new Iso! Once all sheet metal is fitted perfectly, most of the time is spent on blocking, blocking, and again more blocking. The finishing coat is easy in comparison.

At this time we made the decision to make the car dark blue metallic with a red leather interior. The owner and I picked a very eye-catching shade after we showed him a few test samples. For leather, we contacted the only business capable of duplicating the Frantzi process as used by Iso and Bizzarrini. The process of finding the perfect shade commenced here and I’ll report on that later. As indicated this car was born with a brown metallic exterior and tan interior, not really a shade that makes the car stand out. In all my years of restoring such high-end cars, I have come to the conclusion in most cases it should be left to the owner to pick his own color – in the end, HE is the one to enjoy it, and I also noticed there is no negative effect on selling prices, some non-factory colors even fetch more than factory.

While the car is being painted all other parts got my full attention. Because all aftermarket wiring looms look very fake and give me more work than old ones – I restored the wiring in this Fidia to factory specs. And that means down to original spade connectors, boots, and colors. There were many (burned) shorts in the old one and even just cleaning off the old overspray took us some serious time to do it right.

The engine was being rebuilt by the shop that does all my Iso and Bizzarrini engines – we leave the outside as stock as possible and tweak the internals so we are right under the 400 hp mark. I have included the link to a video of this actual Fidia motor being dyno tested – that way I also don’t have to break in the cam anymore. As this is going to be a street car, we kept everything else (like cast iron intake manifold) totally stock. Video:

In the doors the original factory color came out – a for that time highly popular “Oro Antico Metallizzato” or metallic gold. The owner and I quickly decided it was not going back to factory color. 😎 A look inside the doors showed where the external rust bubbles came from – it became clear there was more rust waiting for me. The factory put a tar like coating on the blank sheet metal, however it soon cracked and gave water plenty of opportunities to attack. This is the main reason why most of these S4/Fidias are rusted out and need (very) extensive sheet metal work. Luckily this one is not as bad as most. Obviously the floors got saved by the dry climate this car was used in.

Further dangerous electrical “fixes”, lots of bondo gobs and Mickey Mouse “repairs” with silicone. Many bolts inside the doors were rusted stuck and no WD40 or blow torch made them come out whole. Interesting detail: these cars were painted with the door hinges installed, under them there was no more than a light coat of black primer. Of course this looks awful when the hinges come off. These cars were not meant to exist longer than 10 years, so in fact the ones surviving did very well.