Is he being deprived of love?
09/22/2025
No fewer than 27 Fiat Topolino between 1936 and 1954 are currently for sale, both in Switzerland and in Germany. I quickly found this number on the most important online sales portals. There are five cars on zwischengas.com alone.
This makes me wonder: have the enthusiasts lost their love for their little mice, so that the Fiat 500 A, B and C are now being sold off by the dozen?
Well, some offers are in the realm of fantasy prices. I interpret this to mean that the heirs of the former owners have probably added on the restoration costs. And of course they are (in principle) right, because a small car can certainly require major investment if it needs a general restoration. But even cars in the lowest price range have been bobbing around on the relevant classifieds sites for months, apparently without any serious buyers.
Yet they were once among our favorite classics. Cute to look at and mature in their manners: With a proper four-cylinder engine and water cooling, they are so much more "car" than, say, the Nuova 500 with its air-cooled parallel twin at the rear.
Fiat 500 B chassis. It had everything like the big cars, only smaller
And yet, everyone knows the Cinquecento and the "Jö" effect still seems to work perfectly. But why do so many people want to get rid of the Topolino now?
It can't really be down to the supply of parts. It's still exceptionally good and prices seem moderate. It should be possible to fix all mechanical ailments, even sheet metal parts are available - and many accessories.
However, the number of people who experienced the "Topi" on the road back then is decreasing. My father, for example, remembers how they "borrowed" a neighbor's car two or three times at night when he was a neighborhood boy. Back then, many people in Switzerland simply left the ignition key in the lock. The car was a Fiat Topolino and had 2-3 kilometers more on the odometer after the nightly lap of honor.
"Dutti", the Migros founder drove a Fiat Topolino
Gottlieb Duttweiler, the founder of Migros, Switzerland's largest retailer, also drove a Fiat Topolino. This fascinated me even as a child, when I imagined that this man owned all the toy cars that were sold in Migros - impressive! But then this little car - incomprehensible.
However, the Topolino was no longer really part of everyday life in my youth. In my home town of Lucerne, however, there was often a green "Topi" with a luggage rack parked on the street. It was obviously still used by an enthusiast as an everyday car in the 1980s, at least in summer. Yes, the first colleague of mine who ever drove a classic car came to a "Pfadi" event in his father's Topolino B at the end of the 1980s.
Rare today and therefore still coveted: the "Woody" Giardiniera
And the first car I ever worked on was a dark blue Topolino C. I removed the engine from the car on behalf of the garage owner, where I went to work for a month to find out whether screwing could become my purpose in life - and then pimped it red.
Yes, I even drove my first few meters alone behind the wheel of a car in a Topolino, in the same garage. It was a gray 500 C Giardiniera belonging to a well-known Italian restaurateur in Lucerne. I had previously changed the shock absorbers on it.
Now they are apparently being disposed of, sold, given up... Recently, at the Emil Frey Classics auction in Safenwil, a 500 C in need of some work was sold to a young couple for just 3206 francs plus 11 percent buyer's premium - after all! Maybe you really should strike now. I've certainly thought about it.
