Fiat 500 - half the size of its late descendant
Rarely do you see the old Fiat 500, which was actually called the "Nuova 500", and the new Fiat 500, which has been on sale since 2007, so close together - without any marketing considerations on the part of sales-oriented people. A direct comparison reveals the differences.
The "old" is much more compact, in fact it is around 20% smaller. With a length of 2.97 m, it can use much shorter parking spaces than its 3.546 m long successor. At 1.32 m wide, the smaller model was also much easier to position in the parking spaces of large city parking garages than its 1.627 m wide successor.
What the visual comparison only hints at is the increase in weight over the generation change. The Fiat 500 built between 1957 and 1975 weighed between 470 and 525 kg, while the modern version weighs between 940 and 1,005 kg. To compensate for this, the engine grew from 479 cm3 to at least 875 cm3 and the engine output from 13.5 hp to at least 69 hp. In the past, as today, there were also hot Abarth versions.
Despite all the progress, however, the new model is unlikely to make it to 18 years of production and 3.7 million units sold, as the "old one" was clearly ahead. And the Fiat 500 from the sixties was definitely cuddlier, even today and even more ecological when considering the overall energy consumption.
Thanks to their cult status, some of these little cars have survived to this day, so let's enjoy them and let them take us back to the late fifties and the motorization concepts of the time.
