Polish town gifts Hanks a fully restored Fiat 126p
What started as some light humour on the Twitter feed of Tom Hanks has resulted in the actor being given a fully restored Fiat 126p from a Polish town smitten with his posts.
Hanks was visiting Hungary last fall where he came across a few random Fiat 126p cars just parked along the streets and took photos with them. He would jokingly lean up against the cars and caption the photos with “I am so excited about my new car!”
The posts came to the attention of Monika Jaskolska from BielskoBiala, the town where factories churned out the little econoboxes when Poland was part of the Soviet bloc in 1971 up to 2000. Jaskolska decided to buy the actor — who has a net worth of more than US$350 million — a 126p, and crowd sourced more than US$2,000 to purchase a used one, only to have a blue 126p gifted to her from an anonymous owner. Tuning company Carlex Design offered to restore it for free, along with a few personal touches, including typewriter keys as interior switches in a nod to Hanks’ vast collection of vintage typewriters. The 24-horsepower, 652-cc air-cooled engine, however, was left stock.
The car was finally shipped to Los Angeles this week with Polish airline LOT, and Hanks posed for a photo with it in the Polish consulate.