It is with great enthusiasm that we have begun this restoration, on a modest car but all to be saved for its historical meaning.

The New 500 had a self-supporting body, a 479 cc air-cooled rear twin cylinder engine (the first in Fiat), four independent wheels and a cost of 490,000 lire. It debuted in the summer of 1957, the year in which the USSR released the Sputnik spacecraft with on board the puppy Laika, the first living being to orbit around the Earth and in Rome the founding treaties of the European Economic Community are signed, with a spartan outfitting, only two seats and a rear bench, the cabin could accommodate only two people and receives very little interest. In the same year the Fiat runs to the shelters and introduces two modified versions that calls 500 Normal and Economica. Both can seat four people thanks to a real homologated and padded rear seat and, finally, have an engine that develops 15 instead of 13 hp, but are sold for 465 thousand lire. In 1958, when he became Pope John XXIII and Krusciov was head of government and the Pcus of the USSR, the 500 Sport arrived. It costs 560 thousand lire and has an engine with an increased displacement to 499.5 cc with 21.5 hp. Two years later, in 1960 when the Rome Olympics took place and John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States of America, the family of the small Fiat expanded. The 500D and the Giardiniera debuted. In 1965, when the cultural revolution broke out in China and in England Mary Quant fired her miniskirt, the 500F debuted and sold for 475,000 lire. It brings to the debut the doors hinged in front, the cockpit is less spartan and has an engine which develops 18 hp. In 1968, when the French May emerges and Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are murdered, the L version standing for Luxury is presented. In 1972, when it came out of the price list, there was a new car among the small Fiat vehicles, the 126, with the 500 alongside the Spartan interpretation R, which remained on the scene until 1975. When it debuted, the year in which Richard Nixon made a historic trip to China just before the outbreak of the Watergate, it was on sale for 600 thousand lire. It is established as a true second car for the family also by virtue of the change in the quality of Italian life. It is enough to think that in 1957 the price of the first 500 was equal to 13 salaries of a worker, while in 1975 to buy a 500 R only four were needed.