The Fiat 600 was the successor of the Fiat 500 Topolino. By the time it was replaced in 1955, the all-new 600 had been in development for four years as designer Dante Giacosa wrestled with a way to seat four adults in comfort in an affordable, economical small runabout.
The answer was to place the four-cylinder, water-cooled 633cc engine in the rear to free up cabin space to seat four in a body shell just 320 centimeters long.
The Italian public clearly approved the 600 and it quickly became the status symbol of a new, urbanized population who wanted a car to go with their TVs and washing machines. A million cars were sold in the model’s first six years of production and, by 1961, a remarkable 1,000 cars a day were being produced by the Mirafiori plant, which was expanding at a rapid rate.
The little engine produced 28hp and a top speed of only 59mph (no 0-60 times here) but, in 1956, a year after production began, race car company Abarth – which had begun its association with Fiat four years earlier – took delivery of the 600 and boosted its engine capacity to 767cc. Featuring high compression pistons, a lighter flywheel and crankshaft and a larger capacity radiator, the red-striped Abarth managed a top speed of a heady 81mph, with a 0-60 speed of 20 seconds – pretty quick for a small car in 1956.
In the same year a soft-top version was introduced, along with the extraordinary Multipla. The Multipla is claimed to be the first MPV ever, although the expression MPV was unknown then. The Multipla fitted up to 6 adults into a car that was only 50 centimeters longer compared to the Mini. The six-seater utilized a bench front seat and four individual seats in the rear that folded completely flat to make a large boot – truly a shape of things to come. More than 243,000 Multiplas were sold between 1956 and 1970, a fair few of them put into service as taxis.
In 1960 Fiat started to use a copy of this 767cc engine in the 600 D and 600 D Multipla. At launch, the normal 600 featured two “suicide” doors. These were changed in 1964 to front-hinged doors for safety reasons, not surprisingly. The 600, which featured hydraulic drum brakes and unique single double-mounted leaf spring suspension, also had something else no other small car of time could boast – an efficient heating system and windscreen demister.
Although production of the fiat 600 stopped in Italy in 1969, Seat kept producing the Seat 600 until 1973 in Spain. After that, the car remained in production in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Chile until 1982. In Yugoslavia Zastava produced the 600 as the Zastava 750 and Zastava 850. They stopped production on the Zastava 850 in 1985.
In all, nearly 2.7million 600s were produced at the Mirafiori plant in Italy, with an unknown number manufactured in the rest of the world, making the little car a phenomenal global success story, and not too far behind the original 500 at 3.8million.
