The Innocenti that hardly anyone knows ...
03/24/2023
1992 was a fateful yearfor the once proud Italian car manufacturer Innocenti. The Lambrate plant was closed for good. Until the end, the Innocenti Small, the successor to the Innocenti Mini designed by Bertone with British mechanics, and a few Maseratis were still produced there. But eventually the factory and the Innocenti Small became obsolete.
The Innocenti brand did not disappear immediately on the Italian market, as there was still the Innocenti Koral and the Innocenti Elba. The latter was a descendant of the Fiat Duna, which had been built on the extended Uno platform from 1987.
The Innocenti Koral, however, was identical to the Zastava Yugo, which was available with 903 cm3 and 45 hp or 1116 cm3 and 57 hp. It was built as a saloon and as a convertible. The Yugo convertible was already shown at the IAA in Frankfurt in 1989. Equipped with fuel injection and a catalytic converter, it was intended to find new customers at the lower end of the convertible market. The experiment was probably not really successful. Incidentally, the Yugo was originally based on a shortened Fiat 128 platform. It was built in series from 1980 and around 800,000 units are said to have been produced by 2008. The Yugo was still available as the Innocenti Koral from 1991 to 1993 and only on the Italian market.
The Innocenti brand was finally discontinued in 1997. At that time, hardly anyone remembered the early sports cars such as the Innocenti 950 or the Innocenti C.
