Fiat 500

Fiat 500 at a glance

The Nuova 500 was a four-seat utility city car from Fiat of Turin, built between 1957 and 1975 to put Italian families on four wheels for less money than the Fiat 600. It is often called the Cinquecento, simply the Italian for "five hundred". The car's place in the company's story is covered in our history of Fiat.

Fiat produced the car at Mirafiori in Turin, later also at Termini Imerese in Sicily, while the Giardiniera estate moved to the Autobianchi plant at Desio. It is a two-door saloon with a full-length fabric sunroof, not a hatchback; the only other factory body was the Giardiniera estate. At 2,970 mm (116.9 in) long, it was about 8 cm (3.1 in) shorter and narrower than the original Mini.

How the Nuova 500 was developed, 1955 to 1975

The Nuova 500 began as a decision by Fiat president Vittorio Valletta to add a smaller model below the 600, launched in 1955. The 600 had replaced the pre-war 500 "Topolino" (1936–1955), but it was still too expensive for many Italian families. Giacosa's team was asked for something cheaper to build and to buy, yet a proper car with a roof.

Giacosa chose an air-cooled twin mounted at the rear and shaped the egg-like body himself to use as little sheet metal as possible. Fiat showed the car to the Italian prime minister on 1 July 1957 and presented it in early July. Fiat's heritage department gives 4 July as the public launch, when a parade of cars drove from Mirafiori into central Turin. Italian sources mention 2 July for the presentation at a Turin club, so dates differ by a couple of days.

Sales were slow at first. The original car was very basic, and early on it was registered as a two-seater until a padded rear seat was added. Fiat reacted within months: at the 39th Turin Motor Show on 30 October 1957 it showed the improved Normale with 11 kW (15 PS) and a top speed of 90 km/h (55.9 mph), while the original version stayed on as the Economica.

From then on the car improved step by step, as the timeline shows, until the last saloon, a turquoise 500 R, left Termini Imerese in August 1975.

Fiat 500 production timeline

Rear-engine layout and body

The Nuova 500 is a compact steel monocoque with the engine, gearbox and driven wheels all at the back, so there is no propeller shaft and the cabin floor stays almost flat. Grouping the mechanicals at the rear also kept the car short.

The 1957 car weighed 470 kg (1,036 lb), and its drag coefficient is usually quoted as Cd 0.38. The full-length folding fabric roof saved cost and weight compared with a steel roof and gave the small cabin an open feel.

The suspension is described as fully independent and similar to the 600's. The gearbox was a four-speed manual; sources describe first gear as not synchronised, so drivers had to double-declutch or wait for the car to stop before engaging it.

The Giardiniera estate needed a different packaging solution. Fiat laid the engine on its side under the load floor and stretched the wheelbase to 1,940 mm (76.4 in), giving an overall length of 3,185 mm (125.4 in) and a useful flat load area.

The air-cooled twin and its three sizes

All versions of the Nuova 500 use a longitudinally mounted, air-cooled inline two-cylinder petrol engine at the rear, with overhead valves worked by a side camshaft. It was Fiat's first air-cooled engine, a choice that removed the radiator, water pump and hoses.

The engine grew in three steps: 479 cc (29.2 cu in) from 1957, 499.5 cc (30.5 cu in) in the 1958 Sport and as standard from the 500 D, and 594 cc (36.2 cu in) in the 1972 500 R. Output rose from 10 kW (13 PS) at 4,000 rpm to 13.2 kW (18 PS) in the F, L and R, with the Sport the strongest at 15.8 kW (21.5 PS) and 105 km/h (65.2 mph); the variants table lists each version.

Bore, stroke, torque and acceleration figures are not given consistently in the sources we checked, so they are left out here. The same goes for fuel consumption: the only period figure we found is ambiguous about the gallon used.

Fiat 500 specifications

The table covers the original 1957 Nuova 500; the notes below it show how the 500 D changed the main figures.

The 500 D of 1960 used the 499.5 cc engine with 12.9 kW (17.5 PS), reached 95 km/h (59.0 mph) and weighed about 500 kg (1,102 lb). The later 500 F had a slightly larger 22 L (4.8 UK gal) fuel tank.

Fiat 500 versions from Sport to Giardiniera

Fiat sold the 500 in a series of versions rather than as distinct generations, and the main bodywork stayed the same from 1957 to 1975.

The Autobianchi Bianchina used the 500's mechanicals under its own bodies. Abarth built tuned versions, the best known being the 695 SS, quoted with 689.5 cc, 28 kW (38 PS) and about 140 km/h (87 mph).

Outside Italy the car was built under licence. Steyr-Puch in Graz, Austria, fitted its own flat-twin engine and built about 57,871 cars, including the 650 TR2 sports model of 1965–1969. In Germany, NSU-Fiat assembled the car as the Neckar at Heilbronn from October 1961, and the 500 was also assembled in New Zealand, where it was sold as the Fiat Bambina.

In service: operation, reliability and legacy

The Nuova 500 did what Fiat intended: it put a generation of Italian families on four wheels. Fiat-badged saloon production reached 3,893,294; with about 327,000 Giardinieras and the licence-built cars, the total is usually put at more than 4.25 million.

Its everyday strengths came from its engineering: the air-cooled twin needed no coolant, and the simple mechanicals were easy to work on. We found no reliability study or survey data for the car from the period, so this article makes no claims about typical faults.

Design recognition came early: in 1959 Giacosa received the Compasso d'Oro, Italy's leading industrial design award, for the Nuova 500. The car is often placed beside the Volkswagen Beetle and the Mini among the classic cars of the 1950s that shaped mass motoring in Europe, and it remains one of the best-known Italian cars of any era.

The modern Fiat 500 (2007 onwards)

Fiat revived the name with a new, front-engined, front-wheel-drive Fiat 500, officially revealed on 4 July 2007, exactly 50 years after the original. Based on the 2004 Trepiuno concept, it was built mainly at Tychy in Poland (2007–2024) and also at Toluca in Mexico (2011–2019). At 3,546 mm (139.6 in) long it is much bigger than the car it pays tribute to, and it joined the reborn VW Beetle and the modern Mini among Europe's retro-styled models.

The new car was voted European Car of the Year 2008, and its bodyshell won the EuroCarBody 2007 award. In Euro NCAP's August 2007 test it scored five stars for adult occupant protection with 35 points; Euro NCAP re-tested it in 2017, when it received three stars. These ratings apply only to the 2007 car; no crash rating exists for the classic Nuova 500. A new-generation, battery-electric Fiat 500e was unveiled in March 2020 and is built at Mirafiori, and a mild-hybrid petrol version was announced in 2025, with production reported from November 2025. Today it competes with city cars such as the Smart fortwo; the rest of the range is under all Fiat models.

Telling the versions apart today

Many Nuova 500s survive, and the main thing to establish with any example is which version it is. The doors give a quick first clue: cars built before the 500 F of 1965 have rear-hinged doors, while the F, L and R have front-hinged ones. Engine size helps too, with 479 cc on early cars, 499.5 cc on the Sport, D, F, L and Giardiniera, and 594 cc only on the R. Because engines and parts are often swapped, chassis and engine numbers should be checked against the factory records for the claimed version.