Fiat 500 of one, Cinquecento of another...Pretty much right after I learned to drive, my parents were looking for a new car, and I was delighted at the thought that I'd have a say in the decision, as I was one of the drivers now. (There's more to this than nostalgia, I promise.) One of the cars we looked at was the Fiat Cinquecento, which felt pretty much ideal to me as we were nipping around the little back streets of Lancashire on the test drive. Looking back, what I liked about it was largely superficial, and now I work for an car insurance company I'm more open to the reasons my dad vetoed it. But nothing will take away how perfectly the hand would fall from the steering wheel to the gearstick; it's probably true that Fiat, along with Italian food, was one of the things that encouraged me to take some Italian courses while I was at university.
Mi piace il mio Fiat Cinquecento: I like my Fiat 500. See? It had a good effect, even if we didn't buy the car. And then I find myself wondering if I imagined it all when I see that the Fiat 500 was relaunched this year, having been discontinued since before I was born. It sounds like one of those ghost stories where the stable-boy says 'But Lady Marian drowned forty years ago this very night'. Except it's far more mundane; the Fiat Cinquecento that I knew is different from the 500, which it turns out is pronounced 'five hundred' over here in the UK. As my colleague to my left asked, so what do they call the 500 in Italy? And over here, what is in a brand name? This probably isn't the place to retell the story about the troubles Toyota had trying to promote the MR2 in French, but their Corolla has caused an argument on its Wikipedia page. Although 'the Corolla' is the best-selling car ever, there are several kinds of car that have 'Corolla' written on the boot, and some people think the sales figures should be divided by the number of reinventions. On this front, it looks like the Fiat 500 is a reinvention, seeming to have more in common with the Fiat Panda than the discontinued 500; like the Corolla, it's probably something to do with Fiat applying the same sort of design concepts that led to the 500 as was being applied to the world now to create the new 500.
And then a pinch of interactivity on top; I've just been playing with the 500's website, where you can mix and match the exteriors and interiors – everything from colours and stylings to your choice of air freshener dispenser. There's various forms of sticker art and people pulling faces and saying 500 in pretty much all the languages there are and a dancing… um… thing. You'll have noticed this isn't exactly objective journalism; in fact, it feels a little like I'm falling in love with all the superficial features again, despite my motor insurance head reminding me that there are more important things than these. But am I rediscovering an old flame, or betraying a first love with a sneaky impersonator? More to the point, should I not be moving on?
Insurance head says yes. Nostalgic side, though, longs to go back and say dance, little dancing thing, dance, you'll persuade me yet; perhaps not l'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle, but the love that moves the wallet, at least.
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