124s were probably the best car Fiat ever made. Easy to work on, if a bit strange mechanically ("that's Italian!").
When I bought my first 124 Spider (used, for $400) it came with several boxes of spare parts and records from the original owner. It was kind of like an aircraft logbook, The original owner must have been a med student, I could trace him from a dorm room at Princeton in 1971 through a couple of hospitals in different towns where he must've worked.
Anyway, I was out for a drive on the back roads on the first warm day of spring when the engine quit. Coasted down the hill and rolled into a commuter parking lot at the highway entrance. Had tools with me, hmm, good spark, must be a fuel issue, soon realized the fuel pump had failed. Well, some of the spare parts were still packed around the spare tire, and I remembered seeing a fuel pump there. Pulled it out only to find its case was cracked.
The Fiat's trunk floor was a a piece of masonite, so I took it out and laid it on the ground as a clean work surface, removed the fuel pump from the engine, sat cross legged on the grass in front of my "workbench", and disassembled it... bad check valve. The broken pump from the trunk had a good valve, so I swapped parts and was starting to reassemble it when somebody stopped by. "What's wrong?," he asked
"Oh, my fuel pump failed," I said.
"So what are you doing?"
"I'm rebuilding it," I replied.
"Oh," he said, and quickly got in his car and drove away without another word.
You'd think there was something strange about rebuilding fuel pumps on the side of the road.