When The Fiat 500 Was Conceived The World Was A Very Different Place
Published: 22nd March 2007
The years in which the Fiat 500 was in production (1957-1975) were some of the most important in the 20th century. Apart from major events and history with a capital ‘H’, the overall evolution in living conditions and lifestyles was constant.
Numerous objects that we now use regularly and which appear absolutely banal, such as felt-tip pens or colour photocopiers, even colour television, or the now almost obsolete VHS video tapes and music cassettes, soft contact lenses, and safety attachments for skis, were invented, developed or produced in the 18 years in which the various series and versions of the 500 were on the roads of Italy and elsewhere.
The 500 debuted in 1957, when the first episodes of the Carosello programme were broadcast on Italian television, and ceased production in 1975, when the first pioneering VHS video recordings were appearing. In its 18 years of life, it survived a whole epoch.
For example, when it was presented, the USSR launched Sputnik into space carrying a small dog, Laika, the first living thing to orbit the Earth. It was the age of the conquest of space, but then, the 500 helped to conquer the problem of mobility in Italy.
In 1957, AC Milan won the soccer championship, and Gastone Nencini of Tuscany won the Giro d’Italia. Jacques Anquetil won his first Tour de France and Juan Manuel Fangio the last of his five F1 world titles with Maserati. The Mille Miglia had been cancelled because of the terrible accident in Guidizzolo. Italian television in 1957 not only broadcast the Carosello, but also ‘Il Musichiere’ with Mario Riva and ‘Lascia o Raddoppia’ presented by Mike Bongiorno. At the cinema, the major films were the Swedish Wild strawberries with Ingrid Thulin and, A King in New York with Charlie Chaplin. West Side Story debuted on stage in the USA, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and Italian bookstores offered Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
1957 was also an eventful year politically. In Rome, Italy, France, the German Federal Republic, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the treaties that founded the European Economic Community, which was to produce the European Common Market in 1958.
1958, the year of the 500 Sport, was certainly no less intense than the previous year. Vladimir Nabokov published his novel Lolita in the United States, which caused a scandal and created a new word. There were news items that went almost unnoticed although they were extremely important. For example, Swedish doctor Ake Senning invented the cardiac stimulator or pacemaker. The first high-speed dentists’ drills made a little more noise, but were less painful. The American Ampex company announced the arrival of a video colour recorder. The race to nuclear propulsion picked up speed. The USA and USSR launched atomic transport and icebreaker ships, and the US Navy submarine, Nautilus, passed under the polar icecap. A young ballerina, Carla Fracci, became an étoile at La Scala in Milan. In sport, Brazil won the World Cup in Sweden, Juventus won the Italian soccer championship, Ercole Baldini won the Giro d’Italia, and a climber, Charly Gaul from Luxembourg, won the Tour de France. Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, died in 1958 and Angelo Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII, Khrushchev became Soviet Premier and Communist Party Chairman, and General De Gaulle was elected President of the Fifth French Republic. In Algeria, Generals Salan and Massu attempted a coup to try to prevent the process of independence in the North African country.
In 1959 Fulgencio Batista fled from Cuba and Fidel Castro came to power, Cyprus declared independence, and a revolt in Tibet was put down by Chinese troops as the Dalai Lama found refuge in India. Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states of the USA. Astérix comics debuted in France, and cinema audiences watched Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais and Some like it hot with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, directed by Billy Wilder.
The 500 D and the Giardiniera were launched in 1960, the year of the Rome Olympics. John Kennedy won the US presidential elections and a crisis immediately started with the USSR when an American U2 spy plane was shot down. Economic relations with Cuba were interrupted, and in South Vietnam, the Vietcong guerrilla forces attacked the Diem government and the Americans who supported it. 1960 was also the year of the first performances by the Beatles in Liverpool.
The general census of 1961 found that there were 50,624,000 Italians. During the year, the first audio cassettes were manufactured. The WWF was founded, and Briton Peter Benenson founded Amnesty International in the field of human rights. 1961 went down in history for a number of dramatic events. Construction of the Berlin Wall began during the year, while in Cuba, the anti-Castro Bay of Pigs expedition, supported by the CIA, was a failure. The USSR announced that it was carrying out nuclear experiments again. In the meantime, France was trying to deal with OAS terrorists who wanted to maintain colonial domination in Algeria.
In 1962, France gave up Algeria which became independent. The Cuban crisis exploded and the world found itself one step from nuclear war and, as if that were not enough, China launched a partial invasion of India. In the meantime a German, Walter Bruch, developed the PAL colour television system, the American satellite, Telstar, made the first global transmission in colour possible, and the first industrial robots were built in Japan.
1963 was a year of mourning, with the Vajont dam disaster (over 2000 dead) and the assassination of Kennedy in Dallas. In Italy, the centre-left Government was reshuffled yet again, and the cultural scene was very lively. Nikita Khrushchev fell from power in Russia, replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as Communist Party secretary and Alexey Kosygin as Prime Minister. Palmiro Togliatti, secretary of the Italian Communist Party, died in Yalta (USSR).
Early in 1964 France recognised Red China and the USA began to bomb North Vietnam. China exploded its first atom bomb and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) was founded in Jerusalem. That year the Milan underground was inaugurated and A fistful of dollars by Sergio Leone, the first archetypal ‘Spaghetti’ Western, reached the cinemas. A Czechoslovak technician produced the first soft contact lenses and in Germany, biodegradable detergents became obligatory.
In 1965 the 500 F made its debut, while the Cultural Revolution was starting in China, Mary Quant was launching the miniskirt in Britain, and the vernacular was replacing Latin in the Catholic liturgy. The mention of these three so different events (combined with the launch of another version of the small Fiat) underlined the many changes that took place in 1965. From the marketing of the first video-recorders right up to the construction of the first electronic music synthesisers and the launch of the first telecommunications satellite. Tragic events for the year included the race riots in Los Angeles, the assassination of Malcolm X, a new war between India and Pakistan, and guerrilla attacks on Israel by the PLO and Al-Fatah.
In 1966, Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India, while the Red Guards were created in China to support the Cultural Revolution. It was the year that the Americans bombed Hanoi, and that De Gaulle decided to take France out of NATO. The French manufacturer Salomon produced and marketed the first safety attachments for downhill skis. The home team won the World Cup in England.
The Six Day war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria, during which the Israeli army occupied the Golan Heights, Sinai, the West Bank and Jerusalem set the summer of 1967 alight. That same year there was a military coup in Greece, and Ernesto Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia by government troops. The South African Christian Barnard carried out the first human heart transplant. Hair was staged for the first time in a theatre off Broadway.
The Fiat 500 L was launched in 1968, as was the first colour television patented by Sony, the Trinitron. That year Italy was also involved in a huge project to dismantle and reassemble the Abu Simbel temples, threatened by the construction of the Aswan dam. With the slogan ‘Power to the Imagination’, student movements all over Europe rose up to try to shake up a society that was out of date. That same year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the violence of the Vietnam war increased, Czechoslovakia was invaded by Russian troops to wipe out the new liberal political environment created by Dubcek. In the USA, Richard Nixon was re-elected President. In Italy, a disastrous earthquake hit the Belice Valley.
Man’s landing on the moon was the event that symbolises 1969. By itself. It was sufficient to represent a year characterised by Concorde’s first flight, or the Woodstock pop festival in the USA, depending on one’s taste. The first peace negotiations between USA and North Vietnam were held in Paris during the year, and Ho Chi Mihn died in Hanoi. Yasser Arafat was elected President of the PLO, and in France De Gaulle resigned and was replaced by Georges Pompidou. A military coup in Libya removed King Idris, and colonel Gaddafi seized power.
In 1970, American bombing raids started again in Vietnam, Nasser died and Khmer Rouge guerrilla warfare began in Cambodia. Divorce was introduced in Italy. The list of ‘positive events’ for the year included the first regular flights of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet and the first cassette video recorders on the market.
Bangladesh was created out of the former East Pakistan. This was one of the events of 1971, the year in which a popular referendum gave women the vote in Switzerland. In Uganda, Idi Amin seized power. China obtained a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The same year, French fashion designer Coco Chanel died. In California, biochemist Chob Hao Li synthesised the growth hormone, and the CAT scan diagnostic procedure was refined. Moon landings continued and the American Apollo 15 astronauts actually drove around on the moon in a special lunar vehicle.
1972 was the year of the last series of the Fiat 500, the R. In the Spring, Luigi Berlinguer was elected secretary of the Italian Communist Party and Richard Nixon made an historic journey to China. But the most shocking event in 1972 was the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. And the Watergate scandal broke in the USA. Interesting events of the year included the marketing of the first home pregnancy test, and the sale of the first, extremely expensive, pocket electronic calculators.
In January 1973, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark joined the European Common Market, and USA and North Vietnam signed an agreement that envisaged the American withdrawal from the country and its unification. Also in the USA, the Senate investigation into Nixon’s role in the Watergate affair began. In Chile, Salvador Allende was killed during a coup, and in Argentina Juan Domingo Peron returned to power, being elected President. The two Germanies joined the United Nations. The Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war broke out in November, and in Spain pro-Franco Prime Minister Carrero Blanco was assassinated. OPEC countries approved an increase in oil prices that had serious repercussions for Western economies.
1974 began with the good news that Israel was abandoning the Suez Canal, thus speeding up the peace process with Sadat’s Egypt. In Portugal the Carnation Revolution took place, bringing the Salazar-Caetano era to an end. In Germany, Willy Brandt resigned as Chancellor when one of his collaborators was accused of spying for East Germany. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected President of France, with Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister. In Greece, the military regime collapsed, and Cyprus was divided in two, after the landing of Turkish troops. Nixon faced impeachment following the Watergate affair and he resigned, being replaced by Vice President Gerald Ford. In Italy, while the threat of terrorism from the left and the right increased, a referendum to abolish divorce was defeated.
1975 was the last year of production of the 500 R. To understand how much the world had changed in the 18 years since 1957, we only have to think that in 1975 the VHS format for video cassettes had become common use, the first colour photocopier was being mass produced, and a primitive video-disc was on the market. The American and Soviet spaceships Apollo and Soyuz linked up in space. In Italy the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, another sign of the changing society.
Fiat 500
Our Fiat 500 Guide lists the full specification of the current UK 500 range, including car prices, fuel consumption, dimensions and other vital data.
Price Range: £9,300 - £14,150
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Models in the range: 10
We have road tested the Fiat 500, to read our in-depth car review:
Fiat 500 Review - Feb 2008
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