PAST IMPERFECT:Dante Giacosa created some of Fiat's most iconic cars and helped shape the course of modern car design, writes Bob Montgomery
ALMOST UNKNOWN outside his native Italy, the engineer-designer Dante Giacosa had one of the most enduring and fruitful relationships between a car designer and a single car manufacturer. That manufacturer was Fiat and it’s lengthy collaboration with Giacosa produced a series of iconic cars ranging from the Fiat 500 of 1936 to the Fiat 128 of 1969 – an almost unmatched span of 33 years.
Giacosa trained as an engineer in Turin and joined Fiat soon after his graduation. Fiat had been formed in 1899 by nine entrepreneurs and it was one of these, Giovanni Agnelli, who had the idea of creating a people’s car for Italy. Two competing prototypes were designed and built, but the air-cooled design by Oreste Lardone caught fire and Agnelli turned to Giacosa’s design.
Extraordinary as it may seem today, Giacosa’s design was entirely the work of it’s creator, from the engine to the styling of the body. The result was the Fiat 500, or Topolino ( meaning Mickey Mouse), and was launched in 1936 at the Milan Motorshow. The Topolino was an immediate success, carrying two people in comfort in it’s cleverly stream-lined body.
The Topolino was manufactured before and after the second World War and between 1936 and 1948, 122,000 Topolinos rolled off the Fiat assembly lines to make it Italy’s most popular car. Giacosa also produced a number of designs during this period for Cisitalia, the Italian racing car manufacturer. In 1951 he began work for Fiat on a 600 model, adopting a rear engine to allow an expanded interior and room for four seats. Launched in 1955, the 600 was also a tremendous success and was the perfect car for Italian motorists at the time.
Giacosa then began work on a replacement for the 500 and following the theme adopted for the 600, again placed the engine at the rear. The resultant design, with its fold-back sunroof, became a major hit with Italy’s young drivers and incredibly the Fiat 500 remained in production until 1975.
Giacosa’s last design for Fiat was the 128 in 1968 and he retired from Fiat in 1975. His influence had been enormous and other designs which he produced for the company included the Fiat 1400 in 1950, the Fiat 850 and the Autobianchi Primula for the Autobianchi company which had been formed jointly by Bianchi, Fiat and Pirelli. The Primula was notable for being Fiat’s first front-wheel-drive design with a transverse engine. It’s gearbox was placed on the end of the engine and drove through unequal length drive shafts – rather than a gearbox in the sump like the Mini – and it was this layout which became universal and would be copied by Fiat for all of its models.
Another significant Giacosa design was the British Hillman Imp. This innovative car was beaten to the marketplace by the Mini however, and was unfairly overshadowed throughout its life by the BMC product.
Giacosa was a highly intuitive designer who had an unrivalled appreciation of the socio-economic imperatives that determined the evolution of the modern car.
These concepts, understood by a mere handful of car designers, were responsible for the introduction of radical change which was effected in car design during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. As such, the modern car owes a great debt to this little-known Italian engineer-designer.