ROME – They stood there, alone and abandoned. Some were without headlights, others without windshields or doors, almost all without wheels showed rusty hubs swinging on makeshift posts. They had been abandoned by their former owners in the hands of a junkyard in Teramo. No more outings with petrol at 1000 lire, no cries of children on board without a belt, no improvised bedrooms for the amorous acrobatics of young lovers under the stars. Those 24 “Fiat 500s” trembled in front of the jaws of the metal squeegee that would have reduced them to cubes stuffed with electric wires and vintage plastic.
It would have been like this if Carlo Ruberti and Alessia Carlesi, owners of the “History Car” company which has been involved in the restoration of vintage cars since 1973, had not lovingly “adopted” them. The fact is that for a few days, in Rome in the square adjacent to the History Car body shop, a huge “balanced” articulated lorry has been parked with the 24 carcasses of the Fiat 500s on board, which are, each for its small and / or big troubles. , to be subjected first to a meticulous examination of the state of health and then to an impressive recovery action: from the bodywork (the most difficult part), to the painting (hundreds of kg of paint will be needed); to the engine restoration (among the simplest and most fascinating in the entire history of the car in the world) to the cut and sew of expert upholsterers.
Some of them have already been booked by a chain of hotels on the Cote d’Azur who want them in a “beach” version. The others will be offered to both Italian and foreign lovers of the vintage genre. And in this way, in addition to the already strange Vespa icon, another jewel of the Italian industrial imagination will keep the style high and relaunch the tradition of “small is beautiful” which in the 1960s made us define it as follows: “Italians? car”.