And you can too, just buy it – or any number of other cool cars from the Malamut collection
“Do you think we have plenty of room here?” said car collector Mike Malamut, standing elbow-to-fender in his wonderfully eclectic collection of small cars. “When they’re shoved together like this it loses something.”
That would generally be considered a good problem to have for most people. Can you ever really have too many fun cars? Maybe not, but you can run out of space, which is what’s happened here. Mike swears – swears – he’s going to sell 50 cars from his 250-or-so car collection. Yes, 50. No messin’ around and this time he really means it.
The problem is picking which ones. So far he is for sure selling, among others: a 1965 rotary-powered-from-the-factory NSU spider ($ 35k), a factory-supercharged 1964 Corvair Monza Spyder ($ 20k), a 1958 BMW 700 convertible ($ 32k), 1969 BMW 1602 in beautiful factory Florida green ($ 23k), 1959 FC150 Jeep Forward Control ($ 25k), a perfect-looking Ford V4-powered 1970 Saab wagon ($ 22k) and our favorite, the 1956 Fiat Multipla for $ 50,000.
The Fiat Multipla of our dreams. Isn’t it cute?
Ah yes, the Multipla. It was the Multipla that got us into this whole mess. Your author has always loved Multiplas. Not the new abomination foisted by Fiat on the Italian market, the one with the cleft palate and the drooping schnauzer snout. No, the original Multipla like this one from 1956 — the original minivan, the car that put Italian families back on wheels after the war. This one is in superb running shape with what is listed as 7000 original miles. It even has the owner’s manual and tool kit.
We saw this particular Multipla at The Best of France and Italy car show two months ago and were drawn to it like suicidal Italian car moths. At that show we met Robert Dietz, “car concierge” to Malamut’s collection, the man helping to pare down the splendid warehouse full of cars. Most of Malamut’s collection is not for sale ever, including racks of split-window VW vans, DKWs, NSUs, Messerschidts, Isettas, and four rows of 356s and 911s, not to mention an exquisite Mazda Cosmo, Toyota 2000GT, Mercedes Gullwing and room after room of other such wondrous accoutrements, including two more Multiplas that are likewise not for sale.
But one Multipla is.
We got to talking with Dietz at that show and the idea of a test drive of the micro minivan came up. Maybe we brought it up. Okay yes, it was us, but wouldn’t you try to weasel yourself into a Multipla drive if the opportunity arose? Sure you would. And a couple months later we were at the shop and there was the wheeled Italian-hauler. A lifelong dream about to be realized.
A thundering 22 hp comes out of the big 633cc four
“Here, let me back it up,” said Dietz, climbing into the front suicide door.
We took shotgun. Dietz twisted the key from “off” to “ignition,” pulled the floor-mounted choke lever, then pulled the identical floor-mounted starter lever and screeee wooshity rattle rattle hummmmm, the rear-mounted 633cc Fiat four roared to life. Or it might have meowed to life. Reverse is over and down and out we pulled from behind the front warehouse.
“You have to time street crossings with plenty in reserve,” said Dietz.
Indeed, all of the Multipla’s 22 horsepower and 32 lb-ft of torque were needed to get the 1,301-pound (references range from 1,301 to 1,631 pounds curb weight) Fiat up the slight hill outside the collection. But get up it did, just as Italy pulled itself from the ashes of WWII and rebuilt itself into an industrial powerhouse. Eventually. Dietz rowed through the gears as we sped (or not) through the industrial concrete tiltups of Rancho Conejo.
“Everybody loves this car,” Dietz said. “You cannot have a bad day in a car like this.”
Certainly, we were not having a bad day. And it got better when Dietz switched seats. The engine was still running when we got behind the wheel so we didn’t have to start it, just push in the very light clutch, squash the gas pedal about like you’d step on a large bug if you really meant to make an impression on it, and off we went into postwar prosperity – and the outer reaches of Newbury Park. The unusually small power output of a car like this takes a minute or two to get used to, but you do — pretty soon your brain has recalibrated its previous notion of what constitutes “engine power” and all is well. The gas pedal does feel weird, not so much like a pedal as a cannoli you must step on until the custard filling comes out the side. At that point you get forward progress, if you’re serious about the cannoli. References to 0-60 times are also all over the map; one says 54 seconds but most say top speed is only 56 mph, so believe what you want to believe.
Regardless, it is the cutest car you’ll see on the road. So cute you want to hug it. But we got to drive it. At least a little bit. The shifter worked pretty well for something 60 years old, though it was vague about where the gears were, at least compared to later shifters. The steering was precise enough and the brakes worked. This was an excellent example of a Multipla — for all we know, the best extant.
How often do you see a Jeep Forward Control?
All too soon we were back at Malamut’s, parking back behind building #1 and then poking around at all the other cars for sale. We made a list of the ones we wanted to buy, regardless of whether they were for sale: The DKW truck, the Saab wagon, one of the Westphalia split-window camper vans, the forward control, heck, pretty much everything that was for sale. The Gullwing, Cosmo and 2000 GT weren’t for sale, as was the case with most of the collection.
Every car we looked at, and we looked at 200 or so of them, seemed to be in excellent shape, and everything runs, thanks to the collection’s curator/restorer/master mechanic Neil Torrey – and a system of electrical cords that snake throughout the buildings, attached to trickle chargers. Any one of these would be a joy in which to tool around the neighborhood, if Malamut would sell them, which he may or may not do. See, since Dietz came on board to help move some of the cars, Malamut has parted with only six… and then bought another ten. Those good at math will have figured out that, since decreeing 50 cars for sale, the collection has actually grown instead of shrunk.
“He loves these cars,” explained Dietz.
“We’ve just got too many cars ‘cause I’m a sick person,” said Malamut. “I’m like that guy in the bar who has had too many drinks but still wants another one.”
Won’t you do your part to help this worthy cause?
