Mickey Mouse! Ha ha ha! He actually calls it Mickey Mouse, can you believe it?’
‘But guys, the first 1936 Topolino was indeed named after the Disney character. It says here, in this book, see?’‘Ha ha ha! Even the author doesn’t know his mouse from his elbow!’
Even more ha-ha-ha-s. At Motoring, every once in a while, we have this raging battle. According to me – and several renowned authors plus Fiat’s own historians – the first Topolino, the one with those, er, Mickey Mouse-like headlamps (see poster illustration) was affectionately called the Topolino – that’s what the Italians called Mickey Mouse, though Fiat’s official designation for it was Cinquecento or the 500. But according to my less informed and, ahem, hardly well-read colleagues, it’s just ‘Little Mouse.’
Like with the Volkswagen Beetle, which was never officially known in Wolfsburg as that, the name for the 500 was completely spontaneous. In fact, when it was shown at the London Motor Show in 1936, the year of its launch, Fiat’s UK branch had to issue a statement that this car was not called Mickey Mouse. Whatever it may have been called, it made history by being the world’s smallest mass-produced four-cylinder car. And it kickstarted Fiat’s reputation as a manufacturer of brilliant compact cars, a fact that’s acknowledged even today.
This particular model in front of me is the Topolino Cinquecento C of 1949 vintage. The ‘C’ in the nomenclature meant it was the third iteration of the 500. The second iteration came along in 1948, at the Geneva Motor Show, when Fiat launched the 500B with a marginally more powerful engine, incorporating overhead valves in place of side valves and a few more tweaks. Barely a year later, in March 1949, in keeping with the American trend of making cosmetic revisions without changing the internals, the ‘Mousey’ look was gone. The 500C debuted at the Geneva Motor Show, acquiring a contemporary appearance, with the headlamps faired into the wings and the spare wheel being accessed through a tiny hatch above the rear bumper. But the Topolino name still stuck.
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