500 looks like a million (dollars)

Praise be, for a car company has at last taken a wonderful, glorious and utterly right concept car and put it into production more or less unchanged. You're looking at the first official photos of the new Fiat 500, which will go on sale across Europe this summer, and which is virtually identical to the brilliant Treipuno concept car of 2003.

The new 500 is, obviously, a throwback to the classic 500 of the fifties, the car that got Italy mobile again after WWII. And like another compact fifties economy car, Fiat wants a piece of the modern-day retro-cool zeitgeist. As with the regenerated Mini, the 500 won't be a cheap or basic model, although it will be affordable. Expect prices to be roughly between the Punto and the new Bravo hatch, at around the €17k mark, with plenty of groovy options to swell the profit margin by a handsome amount.

It's appropriately tiny though, at 3.5-metres long, it's a full foot-and-a-half shorter than a Grande Punto, and will use that car's 1.2-litre 80bhp and 1.4-litre 100bhp petrols, and the brilliant 1.3-litre MultiJet diesel. Expect too, to see a 150bhp Abarth turbocharged version in the near future...

We're not supposed to editorialise in a news piece, but frankly, this is a car that warms the very cockles of our hearts. For the first time in a decade or more, Fiat is not only in profit, but is taking a design lead too. The new 500 may be obviously retro inside and out, but its detailing looks modern and, if Fiat is lucky, it should appeal to exactly the same sort of big-spending buyer who fell so hard for the new Mini.

There's significance beyond the fact of it being a groovy new Fiat too. Although it uses a modified Panda platform, the 500 will also form the basis of the new Ford Ka, as Fiat signed an agreement some time ago to co-develop the two cars with the Blue Oval. This means that Fiat gets to spread its development costs, get better value for money out of the 500's Polish production plant and share in the more or less guaranteed success of the new Ka into the bargain. It hasn't even gone on sale yet, and already the 500 is looking like a success, both stylistically and financially.