There’s a Sport* version of the cutesy Fiat Topolino

Fiat’s little Topolino has barely birthed and we’re already into special edition territory. Launch should see Verdevita (teal green) or Corallo (coral red) as the main shades, but after that, you’re into the new versions.

First up is the Sport Special Edition, designed to appeal primarily to the ‘younger audience’ and draw inspiration from the Nuova Sport 500 of 1958, apparently.

The marketing flim-flam talks of ‘unmistakably dynamic presence’ but that consists of… colours and stripes. So that’s white with a red stripe, blue with white stripes, yellow with black stripes, and black with red stripes. Unmistakable.

Then there are black headlight frames (whoah), matte-black painted wheels, black mirror caps and Sport badges. Inside, there are black seats and a dash-top box (called the ‘Dolcevita Box’) wrapped in carbon-effect vinyl and a new type of seatbelt. But the mechanicals remain the same – so the Sport is sporty in name only.

Perhaps more interesting – at least visually – is the collab with French seaside firm Vilebrequin (see below), which gets white over blue as an exterior colourway, a cloth sunroof and the company’s signature turtle embroidered all over the dash box. But you’ll struggle to get one; there will only be 200, all dedicated for Italy and France.

As a background, it’s called the Topolino – or ‘little mouse’ – and if you’re old enough, conjures images of endlessly cool Italians barging about the sweaty parts of Rome smoking filterless cigarettes and wearing big sunglasses. After all, the Topolino originally landed in 1936 and looked like a toy – and was one of the smallest cars in the world when it was launched.

But the Fiat 500 (‘57-‘75) is the one most remember, irrepressibly tiny, still bursting with big small-car energy. It wasn’t small because you couldn’t afford a bigger vehicle, but because it suited Italy’s medieval streets. And now there’s a new one.

It’s still small – only just over two-and-a-half metres long, one-and-a-half wide – still got that innocent face and slightly cartoony look, but this time it’s the spearhead of Fiat’s micromobility attack. Yes, it’s based on the same platform and general look of the sister car Citroen Ami, but there are a few Fiat twists. Not all of them positive.

But let’s get to the basics: plastic body mirrored front-to-back and side to side for ease of repairability. That means – like the Ami – that it looks a little push-me-pull-you, plus the doors are literally the same moulding, so the driver’s door is a suicide style, while the passenger is conventional, all the hinging points being identical.

Inside there are two seats which consist of padding on a plastic sliding base, a bar of a dash with some storage on the top under a baguette of material, a simple driver’s display and phone holder. That’s about it. Very easy to clean, if nothing else, but it’s pared back to absolute austerity.

Underneath, there’s a 7.4kWh battery which only has 5.5kWh of usable capacity, allied to an 8bhp motor driving the rear wheels. That’s good enough for zero to top speed of 10 seconds, although because this little urbanite only manages 28mph all-out, you’ll get murdered by scooters at the lights. One gets the feeling with both this and the Ami that it needed a little more off-the-line punch to be really useful in traffic. As it is, you feel like you’re always getting in everyone’s way.

It also handles like a pram, rides like a shopping trolley and has no air conditioning or HVAC apart from a mount for a handheld fan. The square tube of the frame has sealant all around the joins and some of the welds look like I did them. Blindfolded. And drunk. And I can’t weld. By most objective accounts, it’s a bit rubbish.

And yet, if you’re doing a very specific amount of commuting, between say, here and just over there, popping to the shops or bimbling around tight city streets at brisk walking pace, the Topolino has what the kids call ‘vibes’. It’s not fun, but it puts a smile on people’s faces, feels humble, fits with the friendly aesthetic. And you can take the doors off and replace them with thick ropes. Which is probably a thing in Nice and Antibes, less so in, say, Bolton.

Honestly though, it’s a car with some character, again like the Ami. You can park it anywhere, bounce the doors off walls (the panels are all dyed-in-the-mass, so scratches don’t really show), charge it up from a normal wall plug in four hours from a cable that lives permanently in the doorjamb. There are magnetic ‘Monster’-branded speakers that are supposed to stick to the metal frame (ours fell off within a pair of seconds and then lived on the dash), which provide surprising, tinkly soundtracks.

There’s a rear luggage rack that feels like a ‘60s accessory, and a few different colours. Although they’ll come out in a staggered series, seeing as the cars aren’t painted – as mentioned, they’re a singular colour in the plastic, so the various shades will appear once a quarter. So it’s fun, fresh and very low-impact.

Pricing is an interesting one; £8,995 straight up, which is cheap for a car, expensive for an L7 quadricycle which doesn’t do much more than a scooter other than keep you dry. More for the special editions. But in Europe, you can rent one of these things for €39 a month – less than a TV subscription – though there was no mention of the deposit.

If that’s the case in the UK, a Topolino would be a nicer option than the Tube or a Honda Cub on a wet Tuesday morning, but it’s a narrow and very urban use case. For those that can use it as intended, it’ll be grand. But in the UK, they’ll be few and far between, even in cities.