FIAT 500, 5 speed?

[spi-ti-tout]

You had a FIAT 500 and never knew what it was?

[nota]

Originally Posted by Daz27

Hey, I had a 500 yrs ago as my first car, it had the suicide doors and the ragtop went all the way back to the engine cover, any clues as to what model it was? Had funky wheel arch flares too.

Sounds like an early one ..

http://www.quepo.com/queposite/fiat/...ito5oohis.html

[greg.harvey]

With suicide doors and a roof like that, it could only have been the original Nuova, 1957 to 1960. They're actually pretty rare these days. The wheel arches would've been a modification from the original. I'm told owning an original Nuova these days is only for the brave, as it is actually a different engine to the other models (not sure about the D, but certainly different from the F and L) and the parts are scarce and not interchangeable with newer models. Fixing them can be expensive!

For the interested, they stopped that roof in 1960 in favour of the shorter roof apperture seen from the 1960 500 D onwards. The D carried suicide doors through to 1965, but in all models built after 1965 the suicide doors were no longer used. The F, L and R all had 'normal' doors.

Identifying 500s can be tricky, especially the later ones. Ours for example (see attached) is an F - but it has L badging as it is a 1971 F overlapping with the L (they ran at the same time for a few years) so could be mistaken for an L. Lots of people put the wrong badges on them because they prefer the other type, but other giveaways include the dash, the front bumper, and (most convincing of all) the engine and chassis numbers! (110F.....) Beware F and L models being sold as a D. The D fetches more money and I've seen no end of mis-badged L and F cars being sold as a D when it clearly isn't. All D types had suicide doors! That's the key.

[Daz27]

sad but true, yeah I had a Fiat 500 and didnt know what MODEL it was, I was 15 and it didnt go, had dreams of cutting it up and droppen the shell over a spaceframe chassis with a 302 windsor v8 and a c10 trans with a cut down 8 3/4 inch diff.... purely as a burnout car, total oddball idea. Got to the 'cut it up' stage, bought it as a rolling shell for $50 Au, and sold it as a f**ked rolling shell for $200. If only I knew what it was then... I think its in landfill now. Oh well. 13 yrs later, Ive got the skills to do it, but be buggered if Im cutting up a car like that again. Your supposed to learn from your mistakes.

[rcfurse]

Here is where you can get the exotic stuff.
.::Fiat 500 Sport::. - Nanni Ricambi - Bologna

but the prices are exotic too!

[rcfurse]

The link did not come out right.

.::Fiat 500 Sport::. - Nanni Ricambi - Bologna