The forthcoming Fiat 500 has sensationally broken cover in the flesh for the first time: a heavily disguised prototype has been caught by a photographer from Italian magazine Quattroruote testing around the streets of Turin. Although the car's official arrival is still scheduled for more than a year's time the prototype snapped this week gives an immediate impression that the project is much more advanced than had been believed, and its appearance could be brought forward. Fiat Auto have been working flat out to bring down development times for new models, in fact the new C-segment Stilo has been designed using highly advanced computer simulation methods, and the firm's pioneering in the area seems to be already bearing fruit.

Although enveloped in the traditional thick plastic disguise, the Fiat 500 'mule' appears to adhere very closely to the cheeky Trepiuno showcar which created such a stir when it was unveiled at the Geneva International Motor Show in 2004 and after winning the hearts of the press and public alike, formed unstoppable momentum to a point where this project was given the green light. The new 500 model seeks to pick up the baton of the original iconic model, one of the most famous and successful Fiat Auto models ever, and restore the Turinese carmaker's historic reputation for building exciting and innovative small 'city' cars, a reputation that was revived three years ago by the arrival on the market of the 'Car of the Year' award winning Panda model. In fact the new Fiat 500 will be closely based on the new Panda's floorpan and mechanicals, but with a length of around 3.5 metres, and will be build alongside it at Fiat's Tychy plant in Poland. The new car will also form the basis of Ford's next-generation Ka model range, the US carmaker being a full partner in the project.
 

Details of the new Fiat 500 project remain very scant but engines will reportedly include a 1.1-litre petrol unit and a turbocharged version of the 1.3 Multijet 16v. With Fiat Auto now planning a full-scale revival of the legendary 'Abarth' performance division, a 'hot' version, branded with the Scorpion logo, has to be a likelyhood. 

In the meantime Fiat are steadily building up public anticipation of the new model. On May 3rd, with 500 days to go to the launch of the new 500 they kicked off an international operation known as “500 wants you”. It is a revolutionary project that uses the internet from where it will extend to other means of communication, with one single goal: to involve the public in planning the evolution of Italy’s most popular runabout. “500 wants you” started off as a huge online laboratory, where users could discover the stylistic concept of the new car, express their preferences, propose ideas and contribute, for the first time in motoring history, to its creation, in a combined, active way. The www.fiat500.com site has since its launch been open to the public’s contributions and expectations, which will be assessed and possibly used during the actual development of the product. Yesterday, after 50 days online, Fiat reported that the website had received 500,000 hits.

Photos courtesy of Quattroruote