The Fiat 600 was conceived as a direct replacement for the front-engined prewar Topolino, which was both cramped and, by now, long in the tooth. Chief engineer Dante Giacosa (1905–96) was nudged by the Fiat management to stay with the ��orthodox’ layout (front engine and rear drive) but considered that the ambition to seat four adults in a vehicle only 3.22m (126in) long – no longer than the old two-seat Topolino – could be met only either by a front engine and front-wheel drive or by a rear engine with rear-wheel drive, integrating engine, gearbox and final drive. Front drive was attractive but Giacosa was not confident about finding swivelling constant-velocity drive joints that would be cheap enough yet reliable.
Giacosa later recalled the exhilaration, as the body model took shape, of seeing ‘the creamy smooth plaster … spread rapidly over the wooden framework before it hardened … I myself filed away at the initial shape to get rid of angular edges and achieve the maximum compactness.’ This is interesting because it confirms that Italy was then still using classical hard gesso (plaster of Paris) for modelling, rather than the scrapeable moist-clay technique used in the United States and the rest of Europe.
The resulting vehicle was aesthetically almost perfect – an egglike, single-volume car with the utmost economy and structural efficiency of pressed-steel bodywork. Moreover, thanks to careful development it was safe to drive and lacked the fatal oversteer of cars such as the Beetle and Corvette. It was literally the car that got Italy moving again after the war and it gave rise to the architecturally similar, but even smaller, Fiat Nuova 500.
Dante Giacosa was one of the great ‘car men’, with a holistic understanding of body design, powerplants and production. Fiat and Giacosa developed a mass-production aesthetic that owed little to the United States or anyone else.