John Simister: A life touched by Fiat 500s

Intriguingly and perhaps unexpectedly, the winner of the Cheeky Cinquecento class was an example of the Fiat's rare, licence-built cousin, a Steyr-Puch 500. Launched the same year as the regular Italian version, this Austrian-made 500 used Steyr's own flat-twin engine, gearbox, rear suspension and even the floor pan, in a curious duplication of engineering effort.

However, unlike Fiat, Steyr-Puch also built a warmed-up version which Motor magazine described, in its road test of September 10^th 1966, as 'the most rapid commuting device we have ever tested'. For Fiat's version to be worthy, such an accolade would have required a trip to the Abarth tuning company and transformation into a 500SS or, better still, a 595SS or a 695SS. The Steyr-Puch 650 TR II, though, was on the factory price list.

For your £770 – rather more than you'd pay for a Mini-Cooper, although less than a Cooper S's cost – you got a smoother engine than Fiat's vertical twin, 39.5bhp instead of just 17.5bhp (half-horsepowers are important when absolute numbers are so small) and what Motor described as 'astonishing performance'. Perhaps 15.5 seconds to 60 mph and 84.9mph flat-out aren't so astonishing nowadays but matched to a 500 body shape it must have been hilarious indeed. Able to rev to 7,000rpm or more, the engine sounded 'as strident as an angry soprano'. More's the pity, then, that the ride was castigated for its pitching and bouncing, given that a regular 500 is surprisingly good on that score.

It was probably the price that made the TR II so rare on our roads. I've never driven one, although I'd love to. I did once spend a happy day at the old-Abarth emporium that is Tony Castle-Miller's Middle Barton Garage, though, back in the days when it was actually in Middle Barton rather than the much more spacious unit it nowadays occupies seven miles nearer to Bicester. There I discovered that a 499cc 500 engine can be taken right up to 830cc, and in relatively mild 50bhp tune that makes for a madly feisty Fiat. Not as feisty as the Giannini-tuned, 652cc racing 500 with its 71bhp and Ferrari con-rods, though, its engine built by moonlighters from Maranello. That one wasn't a soprano; it had the demented buzz of a giant hornet.

Fiat 500s have touched my life several times over the years. The mother of two school-friend brothers had a 1966 500F, the facelifted version with regular front-hinged doors and a slightly bigger windscreen than the preceding 500D and the original, 479cc Nuova 500. It caught fire one day, but they managed to extinguish the blaze by smothering it with wet grass piled conveniently nearby.

My sister and brother-in-law bought one new in 1972 because it was the cheapest new car on sale in Britain. This cuddly car with its HUG number plate regularly burnt exhaust valves and I remember being amused by the handbook's instruction for opening the bonnet in the event of a broken cable release. The official Fiat advice was to cut open the steel, actuate the catch through the resulting hole, and then take your 500 to your local Fiat dealer to be welded back together, having first fixed the broken release.

And then there's the current 500, launched with a giant party in Turin exactly on the previous model's 50th anniversary. That means the new one is itself 10 years old, and to me, it remains the only re-imagined retro car to have pulled off the idea convincingly. Neither of the two recreated Volkswagen Beetles has quite managed it, and while the reborn Mini started well it is now as much of a grotesque parody of the original as Fiat's 500L and 500X 'brand extensions' are of their presumed roots.

For me, the current 500 suddenly became a car I wanted to own when Fiat introduced a vertical-twin engine of 875cc capacity, much technical intrigue and a muscular 85bhp produced with a turbocharger's help. So I bought one, in 1957-style pale blue with 1957-style cream interior detailing, which to me is the perfect spec' for a new 500.

It's remarkably rapid for what it is, and it makes a proper 500 noise, but it towered above the first original 500 next to which I parked it, a tuned example at the workshop of restorer Thornley Kelham. By 2040, when all new cars sold in the UK must have some sort of electric element to their propulsion, it might even have become a classic.

Today's 500 arose from the Trepiuno concept car designed by Roberto Giolito and revealed at the 2004 Geneva show. 'When my mother saw it, she told me we had to make it,' said then-Fiat brand boss Luca De Meo, and naturally he did what his mother told him. Since then Fiat has made around two million of them.

A new one isn't far away, and its designers are doubtless wracked with angst over what it should look like and how far it still needs to reflect the 1957 version. Roberto Giolito, whose Fiat responsibilities now include the pleasurable task of running the heritage division, was at the Festival with his Alfas, Lancias and Fiats, so I asked him to tell me about the next 500. He wouldn't reveal much other than to promise that Fiat wouldn't be making it any bigger. 

'Unlike some of our rivals, we still have a dedicated platform for very small cars so we don't need to try and shrink a larger one. The 500 will still be small.' Thank goodness for that.