CarBrandLogos archive · Fiat · 1955

FiatFiat 600

Dante Giacosa's rear-engined small car put post-war Italy on four wheels.

Photo: Charles01 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Fiat history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Fiat 600, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Fiat needed to replace the pre-war 500 Topolino with something that could carry a family rather than a couple, at a price an ordinary Italian household could reach. Dante Giacosa's solution, launched in 1955, was to put a water-cooled 633cc four-cylinder engine in the tail driving the rear wheels, which freed the front of the car entirely and allowed four seats within a body barely over three metres long.

Fiat600Jolly · No machine-readable author provided. PLawrence99cx assumed (based on copyright claims). · Public domain

Design and engineering

It was cheap, it was tough, and it arrived precisely as Italy's post-war economy began to lift. The 600 became the default first car of the Italian boom years — the vehicle in which a generation learned to drive, moved house and went on holiday. The Multipla variant, with the driver sitting over the front axle and up to six seats in a body no longer than the saloon, was a genuinely original piece of packaging and an ancestor of the small MPV.

1957Fiat600Multipla Marinella · Brian Snelson · CC BY 2.0

In production

Its life outside Italy was longer than its life inside it. SEAT built it in Spain, where the 600 played the same national role it had at home; Zastava built it in Yugoslavia as the 750 into the 1980s; Fiat Concord assembled it in Argentina, and it was made in Colombia, Chile and elsewhere. Production in some markets continued nearly thirty years after it began.

Fiat 600 R · JOHN LLOYD · Public domain

Legacy

In Italy the 850, then the 127 and 133 took over. But the 600 is the one that did the work, and the design logic Giacosa proved with it — small engine at the back, maximum interior space in minimum length — went straight into the rear-engined Nuova 500 that followed two years later.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1955–1969

Engine

633&nbsp

Designer

Dante Giacosa

Technical specification

The Fiat 600, in detail.

Production: 1955–1969 (Italy) ; 1962–1985 (Yugoslavia; Zastava) ; 1957–1973 (Spain; SEAT) ; 1960–1982 (Argentina; Fiat Concord / Sevel) ; 1979–1982 (Colombia)
Class: City car (A)
Body style: 2-door saloon, 4-door mini MPV
Layout: Rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Engine: 633 cc Fiat 100 series engine; Tipo 100 Overhead valve; OHV Inline-four engine; I4 ; 767 cc Tipo 100 D OHV I4 ; 843 cc Tipo 100 R7.038 OHV I4 (600S)
Transmission: 4-speed manual
Designer: Dante Giacosa
Assembly: Italy: Turin ; Argentina: Caseros, Buenos Aires; Caseros ; Australia ; Chile: Rancagua ; Colombia: Bogotá lower; 0.2em; #tag:ref; Built as the Zastava 750.; name=Zastava 750 Yugoslavia, Colombia; group=N ; Malaysia: Joho
Manufacturer: Fiat