Famous British contemporary artist Tracey Emin has painted four Fiat 500s as part of her mobile exhibition at this month's London Frieze Week. Described as taking Emin’s work “quite literally out of the gallery and on to the street”, the cars have created the first moving exhibition of its kind. This car, entitled You Go Around Me, featured a drawing of a kneeling, naked woman on the front door in the artist's simple, signature style.

In an effort to cope with the huge demand for Europe's most exciting new city car, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has announced that production of the Fiat 500 will be raised to 190,000 units per annum from next year. Marchionne made the surprise announcement during the Investor Conference Call that followed yesterday's announcement of the Fiat Group's third quarter results which saw the Italian firm turning in its eleventh consecutive quarter of growth and record a trading profit of 745 million euros, up almost 75 percent year-on-year.

Since the Fiat 500 was launched on 4th July during a glamorous event in Turin, exactly 50 years after its famous predecessor was launched, demand has surged. 24,000 of the cars had been sold by the end of last month and the order book now stands at 90,000 units. This year's production will be in the region of 50,000 to 60,000 units and work is now underway to push production further next year.

The 500, which is the favourite to scoop the prestigious Car of the Year award when it is announced next month, has only been launched so far on just two European markets, Italy and France, but orders in these countries combined are now running at an amazing 800 units per day. "We are just starting in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland," said Marchionne during yesterday's Conference Call. "In 2009, the capacity will be 190,000 if and when this is required. We are confident of de-bottlenecking the factory," he added.

Original plans had called for annual production of 120,000-140,000 units depending on customer demand, with this soon being talked up to 150,000. Yesterday Marchionne bumped this up to 190,000 as he talked of the 'incredible demand' for Fiat's new small car. Work is now going on at the Tychy factory in Poland to increase production, but Marchionne also stated that production of the Panda model, as well as the forthcoming Ford Ka, which has been developed jointly with the 500, will not be affected.