The Fiat 500

The Fiat 500 

New Zealand was the car market furthest removed from its birthplace in Turin, northern Italy. On top of that claim to fame, the often strange world of ’60s New Zealand saw the Italian icon lead a life its creators would never have imagined.

Nuova 500s arrived officially in New Zealand – almost two years to the day following the model’s Italian launch – when the freighter Sumbawa tied up at Auckland’s wharves. Until then, it had been the 600 and the teardrop-shaped people mover, the Multipla, which had sustained the three distributors which carved the local market up between them.

The drive to boost the number and variety of cars in local assembly led to the first Fiat 500Ds rolling out of the VW Motors plant in Auckland’s Otahuhu at the end of 1960.

The 500D was the cheapest car on the local market, and in contrast to the market-leading British Mini, was generally available off the showroom floor with no waiting, and no preference to stump up some of the price in overseas currency.

Cheapness was a powerful argument in trying to squeeze more import licences out of the Government, and eventually the 500 was being built at the rate of 800 a year. That was after the slightly underhanded acquisition of the Fiat franchise by Torino Motors’ Noel Turner (who jointly owned the VW Motors plant), who saw the Fiat 500 take on a pioneering role in the evolution of the regulations which bound up every aspect of the New Zealand motor industry.

This article is from Classic Car issue 195. Click here to check it out.

Turner and Italian diplomats had lobbied hard for the granting of the import licences they needed to initially build 300 of the baby Fiats a year. The fact that the cars were less of a burden on New Zealand overseas currency reserves helped, as did the calculation which found the 500 had the highest level of New Zealand content of any car.