The new Fiat 500 is a solid update of the late-Fifties Fiat Cinquecento -- that 18-year exercise in mouse-eyed adorability that once served Americans as a source of low-cost transport, and -- in the case of its larger sibling, the Fiat 600 -- ruinous fan-belt consumption.
As one delivered intact through the 1960s in a rosso 600, I ought to know. Wherever this little runabout ran about, it left behind bits of fan-belt like so many mouse droppings. Thus, I couldn't get my kicks on 66 or anywhere else along the vast Aquarian Plane unless equipped with new belts with which to repair the Fiat's 633-cc motor. This parts-changing ritual yielded nothing in the way of sublime insight. It wasn't Zen and the Art of Incline-four Maintenance or anything like that. In fact, it shred knuckles like the belts they labored to replace. Still, it was a small price to pay for a car that your standard hippie gamine could just hug to death.
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The Fiat 600
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