'La Cinquecento' breathes new life into Fiat 500
Restomods don't have to be a million pounds and 600 horsepower, y'know...
A bit like the Porsche 911, the idea of hotrodding a Fiat 500 is nothing new. Carlo Abarth made his name stuffing more engine than could strictly fit into the back of very tiny Fiats, and that worked out pretty well for everyone. These days, though, hotrodding has become restomodding; the process more involved, the outcome more refined and the asking price somewhat higher. But it’s easy to understand the ongoing demand: who wouldn’t want a car with classic charm and modern manners?
Particularly when the classic in question is a Fiat 500. Again, like the Porsche, but also the Mini, the Mustang and so much else of the era, it’s a truly timeless bit of automotive design. There’ll never be a point where a 500 doesn’t look brilliant, so the prospect of one that retains that style while functioning as a new car might is an attractive one. Fiat has dabbled with factory-commissioned, period-correct restorations, but La Cinquecento’s machine is something different, pitched as ‘the ultimate expression of what the iconic Italian city car could be.’ We’ve seen it with Minis - now it’s the turn of the Fiat.
The car you see here has already made its debut at the Tutto Bene hillclimb, which is encouraging: we’ve all heard of plenty of backdates that are nothing more than a swish website and some renders. Helps, of course, that this actual 500 was owned by the family of La Cinquecento founder Max Kindersley; having been abandoned in a barn for a quarter of a century, it’s now been made into the ‘Scattante’. The plan is for ‘a limited series of individually numbered cars’ to be made in this mould, working with customers on each commission. This one should serve as inspiration, a look at what could be achieved.
Details, for the moment, are light yet encouraging. The exterior, for example, has been done with design studio BorromeodeSilva. What looks on initial inspection to be just a very nice respray (with the spotlights) actually boasts wider arches, new skirts and a generally more modern, confident appearance, without abandoning the original identity. Maybe not one for the purists, but then these sorts of creations never have been.
Underneath, the 500 Scattante is now powered by a two-pot with roots in the larger 126, so expect a useful uptick in performance. Not that speed is the outright goal, apparently, focus instead on ‘driver engagement rather than outright power’. With that in mind, steering, braking and suspension have been ‘extensively reworked’ or replaced entirely by bespoke solutions. Probably just as important for actually enjoying a 500 restomod is the same approach being taken to electrics and cooling. Once more there’s little concrete to say, albeit with the right ideas in mind. A 500 might always be cool, but an overheating one most definitely isn’t (in every sense).
Add all that up to a beautifully redone interior and there’s no doubt La Cinquecento has created a lovely little thing. But building a labour-of-love one-off from a car that’s in the family is, of course, a very different challenge to sourcing donor machines and creating what paying customers are after. In a specified timeframe, and to a price. That being said, it’s a project that’s easy to be enthusiastic about - how could you not be supportive of something that looks so good? “I’ve always loved what the Fiat 500 represents,” added Kindersley. “It’s simple, light, full of character and makes people smile. The idea was never to change that. We wanted to take everything that makes the original so special and see how far we could develop it - to make it faster, sharper and better engineered, without losing the reason you wanted a 500 in the first place.” You can surely bet on more than a few Fiat fans thinking similarly - best get checking out barns for any abandoned donor cars…
I may be wrong as the pics don’t show everything.
No doubt you can have it how you want it though, a very cool little thing.
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