Mussolini voleva un'auto per tutti a cinquemila lire. Fiat non ci riuscì mai

Turin, 1930. Benito Mussolini enters the Fiat Lingotto plant and orders Senator Giovanni Agnelli to build a car for everyone: small, affordable, and costing just 5,000 lire. This was a huge problem, because Fiat at the time was building luxury cars, not economy cars. And its cheapest model, the 508 Balilla, cost nearly 11,000 lire, more than double the target. In this video, I'll tell you the true story of the Fiat 500 Topolino: the regime's order, Oreste Lardone's first front-wheel drive prototype that caught fire on the Cavoretto hill with Agnelli himself aboard, the engineer's dismissal, and the ban on front-wheel drive at Fiat. Then came the arrival of a 28-year-old, Dante Giacosa, who saved the project not with revolutionary inventions, but with pure subtraction engineering: a 569 cc engine, a mere 535 kg in weight, a top speed of 85 km/h, and a fuel consumption of 6 liters per 100 km. On June 15, 1936, the Fiat 500 was born, immediately nicknamed Topolino by the people. The price of 5,000 lire never materialized: at launch, it cost 9,750 lire. Yet that little car powered an entire nation, survived the war as a light ambulance, was reborn in postwar Italy, and even won its class at the Mille Miglia. And its creator, Dante Giacosa, years later designed its direct heir: the 1957 Nuova 500. Like, leave a comment, and subscribe to the channel for more stories of the cars that made Italian history.