Steyr-Puch 650 T - The green firecracker
Summary
A licensed version of the Fiat 500 was built in Graz from 1957, which shared little more than the bodyshell with the original. Up to 40 hp from a two-cylinder boxer engine made the small Steyr-Puch an Abarth competitor. This article tells the story of the Steyr-Puch 500 and shows it in many current and historical pictures, as well as in the sales literature of the time.
This article contains the following chapters
- A small car for the mountains
- Initially only with fabric roof
- Model offensive in the sixties
- Special bodies
- Cost-cutting measures and falling sales figures
- Trimmed for sportiness
- Carlo who?
- Speed is relative
Estimated reading time: 8min
Preview (beginning of the article)
Austria is not necessarily known for its automobile manufacturing, apart from the first 50 examples of the Porsche 356. Almost all of the small companies that were active in the imperial and royal dual monarchy at the beginning of the 20th century had disappeared by the mid-1930s. The surviving Steyr and Austro-Daimler as well as the motorcycle manufacturer Puch merged on October 12, 1934 to form Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG, which continued to produce cars under the Steyr brand until the company was converted into an armaments company in 1941 due to the war. After the war, the company concentrated on the production of trucks and tractors. In order to still be able to meet Austria's demand for passenger cars, Steyr-Daimler-Puch concluded a cooperation agreement with Fiat in 1948, which allowed the licensed production of current Turin models in Graz. The first car to emerge from this partnership in 1948 was the Steyr-Fiat 1100 B. The modern Steyr-Fiat 1400 pontoon model followed in 1951, followed a year later by the Steyr-Fiat 500 C. Also in 1952, the 1400 became the Steyr 2000 with a self-developed two-liter four-cylinder engine.
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