Many years ago, I bought a new FIAT SPIDER way back more than a decade before the Miata came out. It was marginally better than the MGB, the AlfaRomeo Spider, TR6, Spitfire, and every other competitor in its class including the 914. The Fiat Spider had an upholstered "imitation" back seat, that was officially a parcel shelf area, but you could fit dogs, golf bags, kids under 11, co-eds coming in at 125 pounds or less........ well if you angled the bike slightly and with the ski tow rope permanently borrowed from my parents' boat, I would secure the bike to at least the front passenger seatback because I was concerned that there might be potential for the bicycle to bounce out if I hit a pothole or raised manhole cover at speed. It was a fun car, with A/C too.......underdash install by the dealer as they weren't available with factory installed A/C at that time. Heck, you knew that about the most you'd get out of anything POS like from FIAT, British Leyland, Alfa, Porsche before you needed serious repairs would be about 55k to 70k miles. I got 86k good miles out of the Fiat Spider, and then with the help of my brother who has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering, we transplanted a very low mileage Toyota 2TC 1600cc hemi and the T-50 five speed from a totalled 1978 SR5 Corolla liftback that was only two months old at the time. It was extremely simple other than that the Spider had a mechanical (cable) clutch linkeage set-up, and the Toyota used a juice (hydraulic) clutch linkeage with slave cylinder. The 2TC is a tiny package and very lightweight and though stock net Hp was about about 77hp, you can easily extract 125hp or more. Mine was modified only slightly to give 100hp which sounds like nothing but remember that is more than the brand new Celica, MGB, FIAT SPIDER, ALFA SPIDER, Mustang II, and Chevy Monza were pumping out from their stock 4 cylinders. My brother had been racing all through the seventies, since the late sixties, mainly campaigning a Datsun 510, but also a 911 and a BMW 2002 , and a Ford V8 powered 260Z .
Another convertible, although not what you'd call a sports car, many decades ago I had a 1966 Corvair Monza 110 Convertible. I would often stick my Varsity in the back seat when the top was down. The Corvair got about 75 miles to the Quart...........................you never had to really change the oil, because you were always adding oil because it leaked oil so much................it didn't burn oil.....the engine compression was good and otherwise in decent shape......it is just that the overall engineering tolerances and engineering execution and crappy materials and horrible GM factory workmanship at the time made it beyond junky by even the worst standard since caveman times. The Corvair was a beautiful car but sheesh, very few cars were ever built as poorly as those things were! The Vega was Chevrolet's replacement in the line-up after the Corvair. Only stupid idiot fools ever bought a Chevrolet Corvair! I am one! There are faithful fanatics of the Corvair today but those folks (Corvair Society of America members) have figured out most all the needed modifications & fixes to make them reliable and closer to 600 miles to the Quart(nearly leak free). No joke, there is a guy in South Carolina that developed an Electronic Fuel Injection system about 15 years ago for the Corvair. It is quite good and is sold by the world's largest Corvair parts supplier, as you may have imagined there is only one, CLARKS CORVAIR PARTS, in Massachusetts. It makes the Corvair into a reliable decent car as long as you make the needed modifications & fixes to stop the oil leaks and to repair other factory GM defects.