Bonzer Words!: The Little Mouse
Keith Ford remembers with affection his first car, a Fiat 500.
Keith writes for Bonzer magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
I read an article in a German magazine celebrating the famous Fiat 500. One of the last of this line of motor cars, the 500C, became our very first car, early in the 1950s.
Fortuitously we newly-marrieds of barely one year were able to acquire not only our first car but also indeed our first capital possession. At that particular moment, we were battling through the accommodation difficulties still acute from wartime constraints, as well as the effort of studying to establish a career. Neither of us could drive then but the little thing was ours. We revelled with uncritical enthusiasm at our good fortune.
I have named it 'famous', although this model was perhaps never well-known in Australia. It was truly a baby car and one I must concede, not well-suited to Aussie conditions over vast distances. However, it was suited well enough to suburban Sydney in the fifties and in no time at all became an integral part of our daily life.
As I wrote once in a memoir it was indeed a tiny vehicle. With its 610cc, 4 cylinder 4 stroke engine it developed less power than many a motor bike although it made comfortable travelling for two. There was plenty of luggage space behind the tilting bucket seats and we made regular trips from Sydney to Tamworth to visit my wife’s family. It took us more than twelve hours to make that 300 mile journey.
As an engineer and one with a penchant for any kind of machinery, I of course maintained and fussed over the little vehicle from love as well as financial necessity. Over the seven or so years that we owned her I came to know her very well. In appearance and assembly, the car was quite conventional—just small. The engine sat as usual under the bonnet driving through a four-speed gear box and transmission. There were two rubberised fabric universal joints on the tail shaft to the conventional differential rear wheel drive. The unique design feature was that by careful and somewhat unusual location of the radiator and fuel tank no fuel or water pump was needed.
However, because of the low engine power everything was working to its limit almost all the time. It was necessary for me to de-coke the engine at least every 7000 miles to maintain the developed power at its peak and needless to say, I had this job down to a fine art. The two fabric universals needed replacing regularly and the Hard-working gear box wore out completely at 80,000 miles on the clock. The four-speed box did not have synchromesh on its lowest ratio but doubtless, the discipline of managing the double shuffle was a worth while driver skill to learn.
© Keith Ford
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With acknowledgment: ‘SPIEGEL ON LINE’
At the beginning of the thirties, a young Italian aircraft engineer Giovanni Angnelli dreamed about a small car of simple practical design which could be produced cheaply enough to be affordable for his factory workers. A 28 year old engineer, Dante Giacosa, was put in charge of production of Agnelli’s design. A new factory was built in Lingotta, a suburb of Turin, Italy, incorporating the latest in production line technique.
Within a year the first Fiat 500 rolled out of that assembly plant in the summer of 1936. That was 70 years ago. The original 500 was an instant success and became popularly, lovingly dubbed ‘Topolino’ (Little Mouse) after the well known comic cartoon character ‘Mickey Mouse’. The range of Fiat 500’s was developed to the 500C which was produced from 1949 to 1955. Through those years 376,000 were built.
