One of the nicer things about owning a pocket-sized classic like this 1960 Fiat 600 is that you can store it almost anywhere! After having been stored inside since 1980 this tiny car is now listed for sale here on eBay (the seller must like small cars, as they also have a Crosley for sale). It’s located in St. Petersburg, Florida and the bidding hasn’t even made it to $900 yet!
The seller has done a nice job of posting photos of the car after pulling it out. I hope the nose “600” badge can be found, but if not it’s available here for a reasonable $42! I know patina fans will hate me for this, but I’m seeing this car in my head resprayed a beautiful factory gray. It wouldn’t take a lot of paint!
I wonder who “Terry” was? Although the plate is dated 1968-69, the seller tells us the car was last registered for the road in 1980. If you look very closely, the original dealer sticker (Wynn Ross Fiat of St. Petersburg) is still on the back, so what you see is probably the original coat of paint. All the chrome even looks straight — I wonder what it would look like once it was polished?
The Fiat 600 may be a small car, but it’s hard to argue it doesn’t have great interior access! Despite it’s similar appearance, the 600 had little in common with the smaller 500, which was launched two years after the 600. The 600 was introduced in 1955, and when production finally ended in 1969 over four million had been produced of various models. Most featured a small, water-cooled four-cylinder engine that was located in the rear like a VW Beetle.
Considering how plain the interior is, you might even be able to reupholster it yourself. A full set of front and rear upholstery is available here for only $279. You can even get the rubber flooring!
Here’s the small engine; as a 1960 model this should be a 767 cc version which made nearly 30 horsepower in stock form! We’re told the engine is free and it certainly looks complete, although I’m wondering where the fan assembly is that appears in this shot of a restored car’s engine compartment. In any case, with a car you can probably push onto your trailer by hand, I’m sure restoration won’t be that much of an issue. What do you think of this Seicento?
Check out that red thing in the background. Same owner as the “250 SWB”?
@Haig..Yes, what is that next to the Crosley? Like you, Im always checking out the junk in the background.
It’s either a Countach or a replica one. I can’t tell from the pictures.
I like it,but don,t think it could make it up the hill to get on the main highway. Where I live at. I wonder what kind of gas mileage it got? It looks like all of its their except for the fan and a couple of other parts. Looks like it is straight and shouldn,t be too hard to restore. The Crosley–is the second one I have seen. A friend of mine has one that looks like a station wagon without any side windows. I think him and his brother put a v8 in it. They put a 396 down in a Datsun pickup. It used to sit beside the road near Charmco,W.Va, Pained yellow.
@ Jamie: I doubt a real one would be parked in the back of a boatyard. But what do I know. Answer: nothing
Agreed, but I’ve seen weirder…
Prob great mileage and if it breaks down, it’s easy to push out of the street…
Brings back some memories, a neighbor across the street from me had one back in the early 1960s. One night he left it parked in his driveway instead of the garage and a bunch of high school kids picked it up and turned it upside down on his lawn.
Man, that’s just wrong. Some nocturnal hellions put my neighbor’s Honda 600 sedan on his front porch, but at least it was upright!
Oh my God! We did the same thing with
VWs in my town too! One night, my cousin and I were drinking beer on his front porch when we saw this Subaru
360 coming down the street. They drove in circles in the middle of Market Street
waiting for their friends to show up at the
gas station across the street. When their
buddies showed up, they parked the Subie
behind my aunt’s car. One of them noticed that they were too far away from
the curb, so the dudes in the Subie picked
it up and sat it down as close to the curb as they could get it. I laughed so hard I
damn near wet myself! After they got done at the gas station, they came over and played cards with us til 3 in the morning. That’s the night I won a well
used ’60 Chevy Biscayne wagon in a poker game. It belonged to a friend of
my cousin who had no business getting
into the game when he had no money to
wager. Wound up fixing the wagon and
selling it to a kid I knew in school. Went
in the hole making it roadworthy but then
again, you never really recoup what you
spend fixing a used car do you? I’d turn
this Fiat into an EV to make it more reliable than it would normally be. After all, we know what FIAT stands for: Fix It
Again Tony!
Pretty much the car I first drove a manual transmission in. Owned by the father of one of my neighborhood buds growing up, it was the “paddock bomb” we were allowed to putt around in on the family’s acreage. Many summer days taking turns tracking around the relatively level field-type terrain, rarely getting beyond second gear. (which probably topped out at 25 or so) When it broke down, we’d fix it, and drive until out of gas or in need of repair again.
Those were some fun days, thanks for jogging the memory!
After looking at this one, I can surely see where Fiat got some inspiration for the new models zipping around these days!
FIAT stands for Fix It Again Tony, I’m Italian and I know they’re tough cars to stay running, guy on my block in the 70s had a 60 or 61 convertible, black primer w white pinstripes, whitewalls and full wheel covers, when it ran he would pile all us little kids in it and go in circles, he was a young guy, in his 20s when he died, car sat for years in the lot of the Fiat dealer in The Bronx, then one day it was gone, always wondered if someone bought it or it got crushed
I was a drafted into the US Army in 1972 and was stationed with the 6th Battalion,139th Field Artillery, VII Corps in Bamberg, West Germany in 1973 and 1974. I was lucky to be there instead of a fire base in sunny South Vietnam. Soon after I got there my girlfriend came over and we got married by a German judge in the courthouse there (we are still married 47 years later). I bought our first of two Fiat 600’s and we traveled as much as we could on $400 a month and when I could get leave. We traveled all over Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Yugoslavia. Those little 600’s took us everywhere and we even camped out in it by folding the front seats forward. With our luggage on the floor in front of the back seat, we had a nice bed! We would pull off the highway into the woods, and once into the bushes on the causeway to Venice. Our little 600 only let us down once and it almost got me busted. I was in live fire exercises for few weeks in the Grafenwoehr Training Area, so my wife would drive up on the weekends, so I could sneak off post and go home with her. On the way back one weekend it bent a few pushrods and quit a few miles from the post so we started hitch hiking. Luckily we got a ride to the base with a few GI’s that were stationed there. I just made it there in time for my 6 AM formation but my wife had to kill some time on post until I could get her back home. Unfortunately my Battery Commander recognized her and picked her up. She wasn’t hard to miss, a beautiful 5′ 2″ shapely 20 year old girl with long brown hair on a base with very few women. I got a long talk with the Captain and she got sent back to Bamberg on the next deuce and a half truck. Seeing one again brings back a lot of great memories!