Cars
There were two main versions, differing in the engine employed: the 1300 model (1295 cc, 60 PS), entering into production in 1968 to go on until the late 1980s, and the 1500 (1481 cc, 75 PS), from 1969. Polish cars differed in many details from Italian ones: most visible were the double round headlights instead of the square ones, simpler bumpers and front grill, orange colour front turn signal lenses, simpler body sheet metal stampings, and the old Fiat 1300/1500 chassis and interior (dashboard, column shifter etc.). A less visible but more significant change in the Polski Fiat was a safer flat fuel tank above the rear axle, instead of Fiat's vertical tank on the rear right-hand side. All four wheels had safe and reliable disc brakes, which also were standard on the Italian 125.
Unlike the Fiat 125, the car was also available as an estate (125p Kombi; introduced in 1972[2]), and as a pickup developed in Poland from the Kombi after Italian Fiat 125 production ended. The pickup was first shown in 1972 but only entered production in 1975. The station wagon won the 1978 Estate Car of the Year Award in the United Kingdom.
Since 1973, the Italian Fiat 125's successor, the Fiat 132, was produced locally in Poland as the Polski Fiat 132p. The car was described as "assembled by FSO", though actually the cars were shipped from Italy almost complete. FSO only did the final assembly, fitting minor parts like wipers, batteries, seats, wheels and logos. It was only produced in small numbers until 1981.[3]
A few homologation specials were made with Italian-made 1600 cc (125p Monte Carlo) and 1800 cc (125p Akropolis) twin-cam engines, intended mainly for rallying.[4] An unusual variant built in a small series was a lengthened cabriolet with three rows of seats, used by the tourist bureau in Warsaw for sightseeing.
There was a minor restyling in 1973, when the chrome front grille was replaced with a black plastic one, and in 1975, when a new black plastic grille arrived along with new turn indicators, enlarged horizontal rear lamps (instead of pairs of thin vertical ones), and a slightly modernised interior: a new plastic dashboard and steering wheel, hubcaps featuring modern stamped patterns, new bumpers with horizontal strips of rubber which replaced paired vertical guards. The power of both engines was also raised by 3.7 kW. From 1983, the car was produced as the FSO 125p 1500/1300. In the late 1980s the 125p received its last upgrade in form of power train from the FSO Polonez and a new instrument cluster featuring round gauges in place of the classic Fiat speedometer.
The car was produced until 26 June 1991 (to fulfill factory preproduction sales obligation – the communist prepayments system, system przedpłat); in total, 1,445,689 were manufactured. By that time the design was 24 years old and used mechanicals which were essentially 30 years old, with only minor improvements.
