Don Kincl posted this shot of his former 1960 Fiat 600. This is the comment he left with it:
At one time I owned 4 of these, 2 ran, this was my best one with an 850 engine and Abarth exhaust. Deathtrap.
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: My Former Fiat 600 – “Deathtrap”
– Posted on June 2, 2021
In Italia, it’s known as a TOPOLINO – local name for Mickey Mouse. 850 Abarth “a death trap”? Ya wanna see a death trap? Try the 600 a Temporary fellow Australian fitted with a Mazda Rotary. Steering? No worries, with its dear little front tyres on the road. Then the bloke would go and spoil it all by planting his right foot to the floor, so Topolino reared and tore along on his two wide slicks, choosing his own directional destiny. Offered a ride, I declined.
In August 1975, while living in the Heidelberg, Germany area [courtesy of the U.S. Army], my best friend in Europe and I decided to take 3 weeks off and tour central Europe. We were celebrating for 2 very different reasons: He had just graduated from Heidelberg University, and I would be leaving the Military within 30 days.
My everyday car during my 18 months in Germany was a 1956 Chrysler Imperial sedan, a CKD car sold new in Europe and finished/assembled by Facel of Paris. Neither one of us had an unlimited cashflow, and as the Imperial tended to gulp very expensive fuel we decided to use his car, a 1972 Seat 600, the Spanish equivalent of the Fiat 600, identical to the Fiat in everyway except for the name.
Now I should point out that my friend Achim was not a typical European male in stature. He was 2.023 meters tall. That’s 81 inches [6′ 8″]. And his car was a tiny Seat 600. But I was amazed to discover that the driver’s seat on his car had a huge range of adjustment, and at the furthest rear locking notch of the seat frame, the seatback was almost touching the rear seat’s front edge. Or should I say where the rear seat’s location would have been if it were in the car. we had removed the entire seat to give us more storage room for the trip.
I never failed to be amazed every time I watched Achim fold his body, as he entered his tiny car. The door opening allowed him to slide his right leg under the steering wheel and once he was seated, he had plenty of headroom! Yet when I, with a typical American male’s stature of 6′ 1″, drove the car, & that seat adjustment rail allowed me to slide the seat to the point I was comfortable.
As an active-duty US military member, stationed in Europe with a vehicle, I was able to buy discounted 100 liter gasoline ration coupons every month. I was permitted to buy one coupon book every month. These coupons were accepted at any US military “European Exchange Service [EES] gas station”, and any ESSO station in West Germany and the US zone in Berlin.
In planning the trip, as one of the few non-married guys living in the barracks who owned a car, guys were always asking me to take them on short trips around town. I starting hitting my Army buddies up for extra cash to help pay for fuel. When March came around I bought my fuel coupon book and saved it for the upcoming trip. So we took my full 100 liter fuel coupon book and took off headed south towards Bavaria and Munich.
I’m going to save the details of the trip for another time, but we hit plenty of car museums along with the obligatory castles and palaces. We travelled all over central Europe, touching into Switzerland, Austria, and France.
Now here’s the best news about that trip: I still had 3 five liter coupons left over! That little car, loaded with 2 people and all their luggage, souvenirs, and vintage car emblems from various junkyards along the way, that little Seat gave us about 60mpg. Yeah, about 60mpg!
I’m including a photo of the little Seat, and photos of the EES coupon book I kept as a souvenir of the trip.
We still used the coupon books and Esso stations in the early 90’s in Germany.
Forgot to include the photo of the fuel ration book
I’ve been a fan of small cars my whole life. Owned a 89 Toyota Tercel DX coupe (certified death trap) and a 97 Honda Civic EX coupe (less of a death trap). The Tercel had the rigidity of a half cooked noodle while the Honda was a quantum leap forward in rigidity and every other metric. It wasn’t until someone uploaded NHTSA crash test videos to YouTube that I saw how grossly deficient its crash protection was. The attached image is from a 30 mph partial offset crash test. The person conducting the test commented that it performed “reasonably well” and of coarse that’s relative to the time period. What I’m getting at is most people understood smaller cars faired worse in an accident versus a larger vehicle with all variables equalized. However it wasn’t until they could see the videos themselves that reality set in. From my layperson view it seems once airbags became law the regulators implemented very aggressive timelines for safety standards. It seems over the last twenty years more safety improvements in all aspects of automobile design have been made than all the previous years prior. Sure it was a big kick in the ass for all automobile manufactures but then they all had to incur the same costs and argue against it. Now I hope they can do the same thing for the transition to electric automobiles.
PS: The Honda was just an example I’m not trying to bash them in any way.
Nice Fiat ! .
In the very early 1970’s a buddy had two, one was very often running and he’d come in excitedly saying “I found an Abrath 850 in a junkyard and they old me the entire engine with accessories and exhaust for $150 !!” .
The other one had a VW adapter and was fitted with a 40hp 1200C.C. Beetle engine, I never saw that one running, he said it was nice when it ran but no where near as fast as the Abarth 850 was .
Good times .
Yes, all those 1950’s and early 1960’s imports were death traps but they were also so much more fun to drive than American boats .
-Nate