fiat 100 zagato e topolino turbo

The Fiat 500, popularly called "Topolino", is undoubtedly among the most famous Italian cars. In 1930 Benito Mussolini summoned Senator Giovanni Agnelli, one of the founders of Fiat, to ask him to satisfy the "mandatory need" to equip Italians with an economical car, which did not cost more than 5,000 lire.

It was an idea of ​​great propaganda impact, to the point that Adolf Hitler, as soon as he was elected Reich Chancellor, hastened to summon Ferdinand Porsche and asked him to create a car costing no more than 1,000 marks, the one that would become famous. in Italy under the name Volkswagen Beetle.[1]

The "500" never born
Concerned about the difficult task, which he would have willingly given up, Agnelli referred the question to the designers of the FIAT technical office who were divided into two opposing schools of thought. The first believed it was possible to achieve the goal with technologies and schemes already used by FIAT, saving money on equipment and materials. The second, considering that the Turin company was not able to provide an adequate product in a short time, proposed entrusting the project to Oreste Lardone, an imaginative technical student of Giulio Cesare Cappa, who had already created an interesting prototype of a small car economical for Italy.

At the beginning, FIAT company management decided to experiment with both solutions: it instructed the technical office to proceed with the design of the model with company standards and, at the same time, hired Oreste Lardone, assigning him a small group of technicians and workers with whom to develop the own mechanical theories.

Lardone's ideas were simple and clear: the new car should have four seats and a 500 cm³ air-cooled twin-cylinder engine with front-wheel drive