mtj-class.qxd 8/10/2009 1:16 PM Page 1 LONG TIME NO SEE 1962 FIAT 600 D STRENGTH IN NUMBERS LITTLE CAR, MONSTER HIT. SAY HI TO THE FIAT 600 TEXT SRINIVAS KRISHNAN PHOTOS KARTIK WARE ooks certainly do deceive. And I am not talking about the fact that this teensy- weensy car can actually accommodate four grown- Lups. I thought this would be a nimble little number that was easily manoeuvrable, but when I first tried to steer it out of its parking lot, I almost instantly developed a hernia. The steering is so tight that the other prehistoric cars that I have driven earlier seem to be steered by thought. I bite my tongue and turn the steering wheel as if I am moving one of those large stone wheels at the Sun Temple at Konark. Eventually, the 600 gets into motion and the steering lightens up. Actually it didn’t; I was just giving myself a dose of auto suggestion. The untidy rattle of a piddly four- cylinder motor echoes from the back and propels the 600 forward. The dash is bare painted metal, the steering is a two-spoke spindly jobbie and there is no view of the bonnet from the windscreen. The seats are like what you’d find in an average living room. Yet, this car seemed to be all you need, and despite its incredibly compact exterior dimensions, you don’t feel claustrophobic at all. In fact there is enough space in the back to make babies... oops. Well, I am certain the Italians certainly put it to good use. The 600 is acceptably raucous and it 146 BUSINESS STANDARD MOTORING JULY 2009 JULY 2009 BUSINESS STANDARD MOTORING 147 mtj-class.qxd 8/10/2009 1:16 PM Page 3 Its lines are incredibly cute, but they hide ingenious packaging ideas. The 600 D got a THE 600 IS RAUCOUS AND CHATS bigger engine, but it was not renamed the 700! A beaming LIKE THE ITALIANS DO; NON-STOP Siddhartha Khona (bottomline) AND WITH HIGHS AND LOWS chats like the way the Italians do. Non-stop was) and gets into the third cog. A burst of 30 per cent gradients (3 per cent more than and with highs and lows. I expected the car speed and it’s the same process all over its predecessor). The doors also got wind- to be breezy in performance simply because again to get into fourth. Sigh. Eventually, up windows and quarter-glass, substituting it’s quite light, but I think age has taken a I get the hang of shifting smoothly and the sliders in the previous version. The toll on it. Maybe I should ask Siddhartha reduce the palpitations in Siddhartha. If engine cover got more louvers for better Khona, its owner, to call up those guys at it were not for that tough steering, I am cooling and inside, a new speedometer Abarth and do something about it. Anyway, sure this car could give our autorickshaws came along. But the fundamentals of the car the 767cc inline-four placed longitudinally a complex. remained the same; after all, at its launch, at the rear (liquid-cooled) develops 29 bhp The 600 D I am driving is the result of a it was the cleverest car the world had ever at 4800 rpm and 5 kgm of torque at mid-life facelift that the car got. When first seen. Something like what the Nano did 2800 rpm. A four-speed gearbox sends that introduced in 1955, the 600 came with a last year at the Auto Expo. power to the rear wheels. For a car with a smaller 633cc inline-four that developed When it was introduced at the 1955 kerb weight of 605 kg, that’s pretty good. 21.5 bhp at 4600 revs and 4 kgm at Geneva show, the Seicento got an There is no need to over-rev it and it 2800 rpm. The 600 D was introduced in enthusiastic reception and was praised putters about as if it’s meant to do this all 1960, and the bigger engine allowed it a for its adoption of ‘unorthodox, ingenious its life. Shifting the gears is a little tricky. better top speed of 110 kph (95 kph for the solutions.’ It was Fiat’s first rear-engined The gearshift is conventional all right, first generation) and it could tackle car, featured an integral chassis and but there is a knack to it. First and all-round independent suspension. second fall quite smoothly, but for It was Fiat’s legendary engineer/ shifting into third, it would have Right-hand drive versions of the designer Dante Giacosa’s brilliant 600 bound for the UK been easier to find that proverbial accomplishment. To produce an needle in that proverbial haystack. efficient car that could carry four I coax the gear lever, use up my people at a minimum cost, Giacosa limited vocabulary of Italian words on started with a clean sheet. Like the it (pizza, pasta, Ferrari, Lamborghini Nano, placing the engine at the rear and suchlike), and finally it accepts meant liberating more space inside. the password (Berlusconi, I think it And it also eliminated the need for a 148 BUSINESS STANDARD MOTORING JULY 2009 JULY 2009 BUSINESS STANDARD MOTORING 149 mtj-class.qxd 8/10/2009 1:16 PM Page 5 ៉ ៉ ៉ ៉ ៉ The 600 project was When the 600 was Hire purchase was When the revised 600 D The last major change in propeller shaft. The torsion beam rear axle was undergoing major cultural and social known as the ‘100’ first introduced, it new then, but it made was launched in 1960, it the 600 was in 1964, allowed the weight to be kept at a minimum changes, it was moving from a rural within Fiat was priced below the car accessible to was priced at 640,000 lire when it got front-hinged and at the front, the transverse leaf spring economy to an urban one. And the 600 that of the Topolino, the masses. The car on-road. At that time, the doors, a bigger fuel tank was anchored to the load-bearing body was just there, at the right time, to ride the at a mere 590,000 lire could be paid for in average monthly salary and larger headlamps with rubber elements. Further aided by coil boom. That it brought life back into Fiat on-road 24 instalments, but of a blue-collar worker springs and telescopic hydraulic dampers, would be an understatement (funny, this there was almost a was 47,000 lire the car’s all-round independent suspension company keeps going through these year-long waiting list allowed for excellent road holding and the traumatic periods and a best-seller comes ability to take on bad roads as well. Italy along and saves its skin ever so often. Will was also going through a road works the Grande Punto do a Seicento in India?). programme at that time, you see, so it was Now, mass motorisation means a lot of quite important. first time car drivers. Which means the car As Giacosa said in his memoirs Forty that was destined to put Italy on wheels Years of Design with Fiat, ‘I progressively had to be easy to drive and intuitive. eliminated all of the edges... What I was Thankfully, Fiat had the searching for was maximum compactness right man for the job in using curved lines that reduced sheet metal Giacosa, who could take requirements, and therefore weight, as in the bigger picture. much as possible.’ In effect, Giacosa’s ‘To my way of thinking, bodywork simply enclosed four passengers it had to cost so little and the mechanicals. In retrospect, this that it could even be marvel of packaging is mind-blowing to us purchased by those today. But at that time, with four years of who had never thought work behind developing the 600, it was not that buying a car was possible. For this The little runabout easy for Giacosa. He had to convince the reason, I argued that it had to be easy Fiat management about the benefits of a and intuitive to drive...’ Wow. When I read showcased a clever rear-engined car. ‘What terror! I knew that Giacosa’s words over and over again, I just The 600 was tiny: heating system, The 600 made its debut at investments for millions and millions were realise that maybe what was missing in which used the air about 320 cm long, the Geneva motor show on at stake.’ It was a gamble that paid off. our country during our early years of 138 cm wide and from the radiator In the 1960s, there were March 9, 1955. When The car was built and priced for the motorisation was a car the equivalent of the 140 cm high. And it cooling fan to demist over 10,000 small vendors production ceased on May 18, kind of people who built it. It was designed 600. It would have completely changed the could accommodate the windscreen and working for Fiat to help 1969, over 26,04,000 had and put together at a cost, but it gifted way we drive today. When you look at the ៉ ៉ ៉ ៉ four adults comfortably warm up the interiors make the 600 D been manufactured people the kind of liberation only a cheap 600 today, it looks like just another cute automobile could provide. The Italy of that little number, but as I mentioned earlier, era was just recovering from the war and it looks do deceive.