Left: Fiat Millecento sedan 1959; Right: Fiat Topolino coupé 1937. Image credit: John Lamm

I own two classic Fiats, a 1937 Topolino coupé, with a tiny 569 cm³ 10 kW four-cylinder, and a 1959 Millecento sedan with an 1 100 cm³ 32 kW engine. In America, that sedan would have been the equivalent of a Ford Fairlane or a low-end Galaxie in terms of its stature in the automotive landscape.

If you were a reasonably successful Italian family man in 1959, the Millecento was the car you would buy; it had four doors, a four-speed shifter on the column, a radio and even a two-speed heater. Oh my God, the options go on and on! Fiat has always been an innovative company.

Fiat introduced the Topolino (little mouse) in 1936 – and ultimately sold half a million of them. That Topolino was really the first “people’s car”. The Volkswagen Beetle didn’t come out until after the war. The car has brilliant packaging. It’s tiny, yet there’s so much headroom that someone 1,8 metres tall wearing a top hat could sit inside. It’s one of the few cars in which the generator is bigger than the engine. The radiator is behind the motor so the grille could be made more aerodynamic; you’d never see that on an American car. The Topolino was not powerful. Its top speed was only 85 km/h, but it could carry a small family, and I can get close to 5 litres/100 km in my car. Here’s the best part: how many car engines can you remove, bring inside the house, put in your kitchen sink and clean? The Topolino is like a big toy, and it has a sense of style that the VW Beetle never had.