Filed Under: News
The mention of Italy and ones thoughts automatically spring to exotic car’s, no they don’t, wine, pasta, sun tanned tomatoes, you thought I was going to say women, okay so I said it.
Back to car’s, the home of Ferrari and Maserati, and of course Alfa Romeo and Lancia, the car one would least think of is the little Fiat 500, though of late the white Arbath that is running around town might have stirred some thoughts, I think it belongs to Mario of chip shop fame. It is a real beauty, enough of modern car’s.
Plans for the little Fiat started back in the early fifties, the brain child of Dante Giacose. Like all designer’s they are seldom known to the general public, the backroom boy’s, without them we would probably have some dull looking car’s. Even with them and advanced computer design companies are churning out some really weird looking model’s.
The history of Dante’s rise to fame is in fact interesting, perhaps an incentive to anyone with a flair for design, it is apparently an in built thing, you either have it or you don’t, though in this computer generated world, the imagination of the individual is of lesser importance, perhaps not.
Dante studied at Turin Poly and gained a degree in Mechanical Engineering, he then had a problem he needed work , luckily for him and us he saw an advert, in a newspaper for a design engineer at Fiat. He got the job and never looked back.
I expect he would have settled for a part with a team, but our man had an exceptional flair, at one stage he was described as the greatest designer in the companies history, there is no mention of being a team player, but seldom does one man construct the whole car, so we take it, there was a design team.
The list of model’s that he designed would take up too much space, but needless to say his influence carried the company forward, and propelled him into the top eschalon of committee member’s.
Dante died 31 March 1996, he actually held a doctorate in engineering, some man, our full respects go out to the family. Once again, there is no mention of his private life
For some reason Fiat is run somewhat differently to other companies and does not have board member’s, okay, no doubt the same functions but they like to call them committee member’s.
The 500 was launched in July 1957, the Nuova (new) was a successor to the Topolina, which had been the mainstay of fiat’s small car policy. The new model had a two cylinder 479cc engine developing just 13 bhp.
With that amount of power on tap, one doesn’t talk speed statistic’s, 0-60 took nearly a full minute to achieve, well it was timed at 45 seconds, and though it is not recorded, I bet the road was flat.
Top speed was 61 mph, so the 0-60 time was quite credible given the circumstances, it is said that it was miserly on petrol, giving 53 mpg, I suppose in those days it was above the norm, and no doubt to get some speed there was a lot of lower gear acceleration.
Fiat saw how successful the VW Beetle was with an air cooled rear engine car, and promptly followed suit. One only has to look at the other German rear drive, the Porsche, not that Fiat were intending to take that one on. We could have also cited Skoda, Tatra who were successful with rear engines.
Suspension was all round independent, the gearbox a 4 speed non-synchro affair, which it is said caused some delightful noises to eminate from the said box, the gear lever was mounted on the floor.
One was not expecting this car to be luxurious, in fact it was Spartan, you sat on a sort of padded seat, not recommended for long journey’s, but there again it was not the sort of car you would buy to travel distances.
The roof was canvas, but ,it did roll all the way back, given the Italian climate which is a few degrees warmer than here, it made sense.
The front door’s, well, it only had two, were hinged at the back, called suicide doors, though in fairness call them what you like but they were the norm in those days. I do wonder how the name came about, guess if you flung the door open in the path of following traffic you might well cause considerable damage to ones self, cyclist’s might get one hell of a fright, though they are still being maimed by the current door system.
Unfortunately despite it’s cheapness sales did not come up to expectations, drastic action had to be taken.
Fiat launched two new models very quickly, the Economica and the Normale, the Economica Was the same vehicle with a slightly more powerful engine and an even lower price.
The Normale had the uprated motor and various upgrades, which included opening door windows, pretty obvious the Italians were not into auto barriers in car parks, another feature was the rear seat became more useable.
Sales had picked up, within a year Fiat marketed a “Sport” model, one has to tread carefully here as great play was made that the little Sport, came an incredible First, Second , Third and Fourth in its class at the Hockenheim 12 hour race.
No one would discredit such an achievement, but if there are no other cars of the same engine capacity as the Sport, it is hardly surprising they won their class, though in fairness they did run non-stop for 12 hours, no mean feat.
The Sport’s engine of 499cc had revised camshafts, valves and cylinder head taking the BHP to 21.5, by 1960 the Sport had been dropped, the engines were used in yet another makeover of the 500, but the power was reduced to 18BHP.
The 500 jogged along until 1965, when Fiat implemented another change, the doors were now hinged at the front and the transmission improved.
Come 1968, potential customer’s were wooed with another incarnation the “Lusso”, this had reclining seats would you believe and carpets, they even went to miniature bull bars back and front.
The last 500 was made in 1972 using a 594cc motor which was adapted from the 126, naturally power was reduced to 18BHP, they also used the floor pan from the 126.
I suppose the 500 was a fantastic success selling roughly 4 million units in a 20 year run.
Many obscure car makers used the 500 as the basis of their model line up, Vignale, Italian of course, and then Steyr-Puch, who used a different engine block making it into a Boxer engine of 493cc but the success was to do with the using of Webber carbs, apparently it was quite a successful racing car.
Ted Lay
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