Small cars don't come with small price tags
In his recently published blog post titled “Everything Speaks in Favor of Small Cars,” our colleague Martin Sigrist has once again reminded us that this particular class of vehicles is technically interesting, practical, fun, and steeped in history.
While walking through the halls of Auto e Moto d'Epoca—which is open in Bologna through Sunday, October 25, 2026—we took a little look around. After all, the Italians were the leaders in the development of small and compact cars.
The selection is correspondingly large; for example, you can pick up a 1939 Fiat Topolino (pictured above) for EUR 15,900.
However, anyone who thinks small cars mean low prices will quickly find that's not the case.
For example, a red 1972 Autobianchi Abarth—a very early model—costs EUR 22,500. But even later models aren't much cheaper.
Even more expensive is a 1966 Austin Mini Cooper S, which is listed at EUR 38,000.
And all those super-small microcars from Iso, BMW, Heinkel, Messerschmitt, or other manufacturers are pretty expensive per unit of space anyway—you often won't get very far for less than EUR 20,000.
Maybe it's better to go for a full-size sedan after all (see yesterday's blog post ).
But the small and tiniest ones are definitely cute, and even a first-generation Fiat Panda has a very large fan base today, which is also causing prices to rise steadily here…
