From 1957 to 1975/77, the Fiat 500 was built around four million times, making its mark on Italian roads at least as much as the VW Beetle did on German roads. Its compact stature and simple nature made it a universal means of transportation in the city of Rome, but also on the country roads of Emilia Romagna. The little Fiat is also popular as a classic car and many people buy the four-seater, which is just 2.97 m long and 1.325 m wide, purely out of nostalgia, even in this country.
The book series "Bewegte Zeiten" (Moving Times) by the publishing house Delius Klasing, in which Jürgen Lewandowski has now written a booklet about the Fiat 500, is aimed at precisely these nostalgics.
Lewandowski certainly needs no further introduction; with over 100 books and countless car articles in half the German press, he is well known. However, this is the first time he has written a book about the Fiat 500, but he obviously received a lot of support from the factory and the Centro Storico Fiat.
Briefly summarized
112 pages and 88 photos/illustrations, so of course there is not much room for in-depth texts, especially as the pictures are often stretched across the double page. Similar to the design of the Fiat 500, which had to offer a lot in a small space for little money, the author also had to limit himself.
He solved the task by briefly introducing Fiat and its predecessor, the Fiat Topolino, then focusing mainly on the Fiat Nuova 500, which originally had just 13 hp, describing its evolutions, but also its modifications from Abarth, Zagato, Steyr-Puch and Co.
One hour's reading time is enough to work your way through the clearly laid out book. And despite its brevity, you still learn things that you may not have been aware of, such as the fact that important impetus for the development came from Germany, where a technician called Bauhof built his own prototype of a small Fiat at the Heilbronn assembly plant. However, Dante Giacosa, who was aware of this development and also benefited from it, prevailed with his ideas and so the Fiat 500 was not equipped with a single cylinder, but with an air-cooled in-line two-cylinder engine. And the design was based on the Fiat 600, which also provided a number of design approaches, e.g. independent suspension all round.
Nostalgic series of pictures
Lewandowski was able to draw on Fiat's extensive historical image material when designing the book. He probably made do with this due to a lack of time, as lesser-known images from other sources are almost completely missing.
What is shown, however, is still very much worth seeing, with production images and lesser-known advertising subjects mostly generously presented in the book. One or two of the captions could probably have been sharpened up a little, but we are talking about a book that costs little more than a spark plug for the Fiat 500.
For a quick overview
It was probably not the aim to get to the bottom of the Fiat 500 phenomenon, so test reports from the time, contemporary descriptions and the sales literature of the time are almost completely missing. Instead, there are the entertaining stories of an owner who obviously had to struggle not only with the joys but also the pitfalls of the tiny car.
The fact that, despite the small size, there is still room for a few technical drawings, technical data, production figures and the price development (unfortunately only in DM) will certainly please some readers. The fact that, as so often, an index has been sacrificed for lack of space is annoying for those who are looking for specific information quickly.
But, as already indicated, the EUR 16.90 booklet can certainly be recommended, especially as it does without modern marketing references to the modern front-engine successor and is always a lot of fun to leaf through.
Bibliographic information
- Title: Moving times: Fiat 500
- Author: Jürgen Lewandowski
- Language: German
- Publisher: Delius Klasing
- Edition. 1st edition April 2020
- Format: Hardcover, 17.0 x 24.6 cm
- Scope: 112 pages, 88 photos/illustrations
- ISBN: 978-3-667-11834-9
- Price: EUR 16.90
- Buy/order: Online at amazon.de, online at Delius-Klasing-Verlag or in relevant bookstores
