How many X1/9s are still on the road ??

rx1900

rx1900

1981 X1/9
Okay.....time for some fun in these scary times.....

The subject was brought up again recently by Dan. Just what is the survival rate of X1/9s here in North America ??

In the UK for example....this information is available on the internet from government sources. But NOT - to the best of my knowledge - here in the USA or Canada.

However....that info - derived from government data bases - IS available to those parties willing to pay big bucks for that info !!! I happen to have low friends in high places....and was able to weasel current registration numbers for all Fiats from '72 to present. For the USA, broken down by model and year. For Canada, even broken down by province. The numbers are quite interesting.

I was initially skeptical of the accuracy of said info. But for example...I did check the # of new-style 124 Spiders on the list. It was about 95% of reported new car sales for those years. Accounting for those cars written off/exported/sitting on used car lots......I'd call that pretty accurate !!!

Now it is very important to note that these figures are ONLY for cars that are currently registered and with current valid plates !!! Yeah...I know...that would likely be only a fraction of all X19s still out there LOL.....

The numbers I got were from the fall of 2018. Keep that in mind. Likely current numbers would be even less.

So......lets have a fun contest !!

Lets have your educated guesses as to just how many X1/9s remain on the road.

For you USA folks....pick a number in even increments of 50. So say 3200 or 3250. One member for guess number. First come , first served.

For us Canadian folks.....pick a number in even increments of 10.

Lets see who can come closest. To add to the fun...I'll give a $10 credit to the member from each country that wins. For anything you buy from me in the next year.

Post your guess.....Answers...and winners...will be posted Friday morning.

Doug
 
If Automobile's website is right, there were a total of approximately 140,000 X's sold in the U.S.

I'm going to guess:

60,000 were totaled in collisions.
40,000 fell victim to rust.
28,000 died due to mechanical failures.
5,000 were just parked somewhere and are slowly rotting away.

So that leaves a grand total of 7,000 X1/9's currently registered in the U.S.A.
 
"However....that info - derived from government data bases - IS available"

How can any number of exxe on the road or otherwise be verified? Note above is not good enough.


Bernice
 
In DCFiats we can get 15 to a single event. I hope we have less than 1% of the total Fiats in the US. 1,500 total in the US
 
Rupunzell said:
"However....that info - derived from government data bases - IS available"

How can any number of exxe on the road or otherwise be verified? Note above is not good enough.


Bernice
Click to expand...


Certainly...and I'm sure you would have to agree....that the state of California DMV knows that you have a 1974 Fiat X1/9 currently registered and currently plated. No...they dont actually know if you are still actually driving it on the road ......

And they certainly know just how many 1974 Fiat X1/9s are currently registered and currently plated. Their computers can easily tell them those kind of things.

As does every other state and province. Surely you cant argue with that.....?

The states then provide - I'm assuming sell - those summaries - not individual details - to a 3rd party market research company. You dont believe that ?

The 3rd party then sells that info to companies wanting to find out - for example - whether or not they should tool up to make brake rotors for 2012-2016 Mitsubishi Mirage. Are there enough of those cars out there to make it worth their while ? That is how they decide. Understand ?

As I said...I did check their current numbers against reported ( by Fiat ) new car sales for those years. The numbers were very close. Close enough for me to believe them. I guess not for you LOL......
 
Well I have 10 x1/9's and four of them are registered, three have insurance on them. (downside only one is roadable right now)
 
rx1900 said:
Certainly...and I'm sure you would have to agree....that the state of California DMV knows that you have a 1974 Fiat X1/9 currently registered and currently plated. No...they dont actually know if you are still actually driving it on the road ......

And they certainly know just how many 1974 Fiat X1/9s are currently registered and currently plated. Their computers can easily tell them those kind of things.

As does every other state and province. Surely you cant argue with that.....?

The states then provide - I'm assuming sell - those summaries - not individual details - to a 3rd party market research company. You dont believe that ?

The 3rd party then sells that info to companies wanting to find out - for example - whether or not they should tool up to make brake rotors for 2012-2016 Mitsubishi Mirage. Are there enough of those cars out there to make it worth their while ? That is how they decide. Understand ?

As I said...I did check their current numbers against reported ( by Fiat ) new car sales for those years. The numbers were very close. Close enough for me to believe them. I guess not for you LOL......
Click to expand...
12 457 ?
 
Sadly I had to watch a very popular US TV series called, 'Mythbusters'. In one of their skits they sought to take a perfectly good FIAT X 1/9 and thoroughly destroy it. I'll try and find it and post it if I can. Definitely on less X 1/9...... sad fate.
 
Didn’t the US get 160,000 cars over its lifetime, think the UK got at a guess ~15,000 cars of which there’s 1262 left according to how many left so 9% remaining ..seems high....however if they rotted and got smashed at the same rate as over here then you guys may have +14,400 cars left!

Does seem high but the USA is a big place!
 
NEG said:
Didn’t the US get 160,000 cars over its lifetime, think the UK got at a guess ~15,000 cars of which there’s 1262 left according to how many left so 9% remaining ..seems high....however if they rotted and got smashed at the same rate as over here then you guys may have +14,400 cars left!

Does seem high but the USA is a big place!
Click to expand...
14,400 Fiats still on the road but the rest of them made it home safely.
 
This will finally settle just how rare these cars are! I used state registration data for years as a way to verify market share of the various OEM's, establish dealer allocations and all sorts of other useful stuff. Like Doug said, if someone has an X1/9 sitting in their garage unregistered it won't get counted on the database. The companies I worked for purchased data through JDPower and Associates. They charged for each query based on cpu time so I just ran a single query of the whole database and stored it on my pc's hard drive after every new update. They never caught on, haha. My SWAG (sophisticated wild-assed guess) is 1,000 X's registered in the USA and 100 in Canada.
 
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NEG said:
Didn’t the US get 160,000 cars over its lifetime, think the UK got at a guess ~15,000 cars of which there’s 1262 left according to how many left so 9% remaining ..seems high....however if they rotted and got smashed at the same rate as over here then you guys may have +14,400 cars left!

Does seem high but the USA is a big place!
Click to expand...
A person named Dierk in Germany used to maintain a list of USA serial # / VINs. The lowest number is 4823 dated 11/73, which would make sense as FIAT first brought the X1/9 to the USA as a 1974 model. If one assumes that FIAT started X1/9 serial numbering with 000001, then cars #1 thru #4282 were the first '72 and '73 models made for the home market and Europe. The highest recorded USA market serial #/VIN on Dierk's list was 166034 from 5/88. That also pretty much jibes with the last cars to be brought in thru Miro Kiefert's MIK Motors.

Again looking at the list, if you assume sequential numbers, then a VIN occurring in a gap between the numbers on the USA list could either be a VIN assigned to a car sold somewhere other than USA, or could be a USA VIN that was never specifically captured by the list as a USA VIN.

The point of this ramble is to say that it's a fair assumption to think that the highest known serial #/VIN number should represent the total number of cars built. Since the highest known VIN is 166034, one could say with reasonable accuracy that around 166,000 X1/9s were made over its lifetime. If there exists a still-higher VIN say in Italy, Germany, or the UK, then that car's VIN would tell us the ultimate quantity of X1/9s built.
 
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