He was the perfect man to do it. Bricklin had brought the then-obscure Subaru brand to the US in 1968, and made a killing. After a failed try at a from-scratch sports car called (humbly) the Bricklin SV-1, he began importing Fiat roadsters, rechristening them as the Pininfarina and Bertone X1/9. When the ’80s rolled around with unstable gas prices, Lee Iacocca hawking Chrysler K-cars, and second-tier Asian imports flooding the market (the $4,995 Hyundai Excel was destined for dealers by 1985), Bricklin went knocking in the Soviet Bloc.