“Don’t put it in first gear when moving, or else you’ll explode the gearbox...”. So came Matteo’s warning, as he explained the vagaries of the Cinquecento’s non-synchromesh transmission. It’s day two of a ten-day trip around Northern Italy, and after a brief visit to Pisa (leaning tower, not much else), we’re in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Florence (Firenze in the national dialect), is full of psychopaths on scooters, the narrow streets not best suited to four-wheeled transport. Tomorrow, we’ll see il Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio and all the rest of the sights. This morning, we’re taking an original Fiat 500 into the Tuscan hills.
After a typically white-knuckle taxi ride to the meeting point (driven by a lady older than my grandmother), we see a neat line of 500s parked up. A blue, Abarth-badged example immediately catches my eye, with its blistered arches and beautiful wheels, but it’s already been spoken for by an Australian couple bedecked in Valentino Rossi gear from top to toe. They’d been at Mugello for the MotoGP event the previous weekend and their insistence on talking about motorbikes while poor Matteo pleaded with them not to kill his favourite Fiat would set the tone for their trip.
We settled in to ‘Rosario’, a beige example, my girlfriend besotted with the blasted thing on first sight. Surprisingly roomy inside (although you’d be better off as a pedestrian in a crash), the wonderful smell of old car pervading your nostrils with a mix of non-catalysed exhaust and aged fabrics, you get a sense of what it might have been like for any number of Italian families over the last six decades. The pedals are heavily offset to the right, and with my decidedly non-Italian specification clown feet and awkwardly long legs, I could do with a couple of strategically-placed universal joints in the areas of knee and ankle. A quick run up and down a passage to practice double-declutching confirms that learning to drive on a Massey Ferguson 188 has stood me well, although hopefully my father’s lifelong, oft-demonstrated mantra of “if you can’t find them, grind them” won’t need to be applied too often.
Matteo and co are happy that everyone can at least make the Cinquecentos go and stop, so go we do, each passenger signalling the appropriate gear to the car behind. I just gun it everywhere and hope for the best. The Tuscan landscape is one of the most endearingly beautiful sights anywhere, and you’re immediately in the thick of it as soon as you leave the Florentine suburbs. A spluttering, buzzing, whining 500 is an ideal platform to observe it from, especially with a line of other examples stretching out in front painting a convincing image of days gone by. Until some horrid-looking modern Lancia flies past and shatters the illusion.
A single Aventador would match our entire convoy for cylinder count, but I’m too busy concentrating on not ‘exploding the gearbox’ and trying to compensate for the utterly useless brakes to care. My girlfriend is having the time of her life, and I must admit that I’m enjoying myself too. We stop for photos at a location that’s almost too scenic for words, the peace hilariously shattered by a local in a battered modern Seicento three-wheeling around some nearby corners, its tyres howling in protest. He must have been at least 60 years old.
Atypical to the postcards, the sky is broodingly overcast, and the possibility of a wet, downhill road in this thing is something that I’m trying not to think about. Of course, the rain soon started, and the road plunged down a hill. Great. By hook or by crook, we make it to a vineyard for lunch, to be plied for two hours with some of the nicest food I’ve ever eaten. The wine flows freely as well, although a swirl and a spit is as far as I can go. I’ll make up for it later. The talk at the table quickly turns to cars and bikes, and Matteo is visibly excited when we relay our plans to visit the supercar manufacturers later in the trip, as well as tackle the Stelvio Pass.
After a leisurely wander around the buildings and grounds, Matteo announces that it’s time to make our way back to Florence. “We go the more interesting way, but it’s very downhill so watch the brakes. I will drive slowly!” This turns out to be nothing short of a barefaced lie, because Matteo tears off like a scalded cat in the lead 500. Well, as much as you can tear off like a scalded cat in a vehicle with 13hp. Gravity is on our side, and the Cinquecento’s brakes get a thorough workout for the next hour. It’s great fun, if a little terrifying, never more so than when you meet a bus or truck coming towards you and the little Fiat is made to feel even littler. An assessment of the car’s handling and dynamics would be as unfair as it is irrelevant, but suffice it to say that things have moved on at quite a pace since the late 1950s.
The rest of the convoy falls behind and a good five minutes elapse between our return to the muster point and the arrival of the other cars. The Australian couple are wide-eyed and a little quieter than earlier, having had a lucky escape on one of the downhill hairpins. Matteo just laughs, the next gaggle of punters already queuing up to take the 500s on another tour. A couple of more photos to finish, then it’s another maximum-attack taxi back to the city centre. That evening, we eat a spectacularly good steak, wash it down with several glasses of Chianti and then wander into the near-deserted (it was late) Uffizi Gallery to look at some art. I feel a bit like Cameron Frye in that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, although that might be something to do with the sound of the little two-cylinder still ringing in my head. Italy is a wonderful place, full of wonderful things. Go there, and be sure to drive a Cinquecento while you’re at it.