The Fiat 600, the car that really put Italy on the road, was launched fifty years ago, but still retains that magical aura created by Felice Casorati in his famous poster of the car against a surreal night-time Turin.
 
It was 1955, and Italy was about to embark on a new era of political and social history: in fits and starts, life was getting back to normal after the tragedy of the war, which had left behind a present full of uncertainty and an equally precarious future. It was up to the willpower and imagination of the Italians to achieve a difficult but possible rebirth. This was the context in which the 'great-little' Fiat 600 was born, a car that was small in size but with huge potential. It was designed by Dante Giacosa, the famous engineer who worked incessantly from 1951 on to develop a four-seater runabout, with a rear engine, that was both light and sturdy. And above all, with a price that made it accessible to the people who built it. The project was known as the '100' within Fiat, and it was destined to change the face of Italy. In the meantime, 300 billion lire were being invested at Mirafiori to build new assembly lines that could meet the constantly growing demand: output increased from 100,000 units in 1950 to 500,000 in 1960.
 

After four years of development and experimentation, the Fiat 600 was ready, and Dante Giacosa made it into the newspapers. As he said himself a few years later: "In 1957, I was invited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the historical British association, to give a Clayton Lecture. I was received with great ceremony at the institution's prestigious London headquarters, and gave my lecture on 'The problems of the small runabout' to an audience that filled two large halls, analysing the various problems and explaining how they had been solved on the 600. The Lecture aroused a great deal of interest, to the point that even The Times wrote about it.