Hi Eric. You are very lucky to have such a good body! I'm not sure on the history of the use of the side stripes on these cars. I don't think they all had them, so perhaps it was an option? Personally, I'd rather leave them off, unless you are convinced your car had them originally and you want a historically accurate restoration. My car is white, but I'd prefer the red. But, I will go for the what the car originally came with.
I bought my car from Mahlon Craft who has been well known in the Abarth circles for a long time. He has a pretty good website if you have not seen it yet. He sent me some photos, but I cannot access them at the moment, as they are on my old PC which is currently in storage (am building a new house). I can't seem to get my digicam working on the PC I am using at the moment, so photos are going to have to wait a while. My 1300/124 has a pretty rough body. I have two very good rolling coupe shells, so I may do some "cutting and pasting" of sheet metal to restore the body. As you probably know by now, these cars have some unique modifications made by Abarth that would be difficult to duplicate, so you can't just transfer everything onto a new body.
My car came without some of the very important Abarth 1300/124 parts like the gauges, alloy coolant pipes and front grille. Fortunately, I already had these (except a couple of small cooling pipe pieces, which I just got.) I was planning on building a replica, but now will have the real thing! I have to thank J.S. for helping with some of these missing parts. I have the 1438cc engine in the car, and a single sidedraft Weber DCOE. The intake manifold seems to be a FAZA aftermarket part. I do have other important original Abarth things, like the 3.89 ring and pinion set, radiator and radiator shrouds.
I have a "new" Delta reground camshaft with a performance profile that I will use. I have a set of NOS heavy duty sway bars and new Koni shocks to use.
Sidebar story: I had found a couple of the plastic "1300/124" emblems that go on the front grille, from someone in the U.S. When the arrived in the mail, the end of the package was clearly missing and the contents were gone!!! Can you imagine postal workers delivering that? I was rather upset, as these parts were original and irreplaceable.
Some day, I really want to visit someone who has an original 1300/124... I would like to get various original details done correctly.
Gil