Dan's Papers - May 23, 2008 - Classic Cars with Bob Gelber

Last issue, when I wrote about car safety and Jerry Seinfeld's accident in his Fiat 500, I failed to mention exactly how small a Fiat 500 actually is. That's why I referred to it as a clown car. Let me make this perfectly clear to everyone out there who has never seen a Fiat 500 in person. It's no more than half the size of a Mini Cooper. The reason it had the model name "500" is because that was the size of the engine. In centimeters. To put that engine size in better perspective, that's smaller than almost every motorcycle engine. A Chevrolet' s smallest V-8 engine is about 5,000 centimeters, ten times larger than the Fiat's. Because of its ridiculous size when compared to the average size car, the Fiat really did look like a clown car.

Of course, the Fiat 500 was originally introduced in Italy in the 1950s when gasoline cost about what it costs today, wildly expensive. The little car sold when introduced was very popular and sold in the millions. To the average working class Italian, it was the next logical financial step above owning a Vespa motorscooter. Unlike the Vespa, a small Italian family could take a trip together in the vehicle, because kids could actually fit in the back seat.

What I also didn't mention in last week's article, mainly because of space limitations, is that for many years, one of the cars I tooled around the Hamptons in was my own Fiat 500, so I know the car well. My car was not truly a classic 500, but a new 500 that was made in Poland by Fiat after the classic 500 stopped production. It was called a Polsky Fiat by everyone, and was mechanically identical to the original except it had a less cute and more modern body. It also had the original 500 engine bored out to 650 cc's, which gave it 24 roaring horsepower, vs. the original's 20 rip snorting horses. My 500, er, 650 would accelerate to sixty in about 25 seconds, but it had to be flogged to do it. Top speed with the right tail wind was about sixty-seven mph. The main joy of driving a Fiat 500 was the fact that to get anywhere with a modicum of dispatch, you had to drive the car as fast as possible. You always floored the little beasty. Try driving like that in any other "normal" car and you would get a speeding ticket every week.

Those of you who have been to Italy, especially a large city like Rome, know the ruckus that is caused every time a traffic light turns green. All you hear is the havoc of hundreds of small bore machines like Fiats and Vespas reaching their redlines just trying to get moving. No big bore, silent and loafing American V-8s in this crowd, just tiny little high revving pistons fighting for position and making as much noise as they can. Small car in small car heaven - Italian traffic, that's the natural habitat of the Fiat 500.

Sadly, my little Fiat did not fit in very well on American roads. It was like a tadpole swimming with sharks. My real and imagined enemies when driving on the highways were large tractor-trailer trucks. With my top speed being only about sixty-five, those eighteen-wheelers would often whoosh by me. Have you ever had a horizontal Empire State building pass you? Pickup trucks were especially unfriendly. They would tailgate me in bullying fashion. There was something about that Dodge Ram pickup grill in my rear view mirror that would scare me the most, it looked just like a mouth.

My 500 and I were happiest on the many beautiful back roads here in the Hamptons. Its clever size transformed all of the narrow roads into sweeping tree-lined freeways. Thirty miles per hour around curves feels like sixty, especially with an engine that's always barking. The car elicited smiles from adults and waves from children. Once, when I took the 500 to a Ferrari owner's practice day at Bridgehampton racetrack, the owner of a Ferrari F-40 came over to me and offered to buy my 500 on the spot. He offered me ten times more then I had paid for it. I'm not sure why I felt so good refusing his offer. Maybe I was jealous that I was in a Fiat and he owned a Ferrari. A magnificent F-40 no less, my dream car. To this day, I like to think it's because I was loyal to my little charming car.

Fiat 500s are very popular collector cars, more so in Europe than here in the States, mainly because they are about the cutest collector car around, and they are cheap. Good ones can be had for around $5,000. As most of you know, Fiat has just introduced a retro Fiat 500, which is much larger than the original. Fiat will supposedly be importing it here next year. I'm curious to see if it becomes as popular as the original. Look at the Mini. Cuteness plus fuel efficiency sells.

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. Email him at bobgelber@aol.com