The Fiat 500 was by far the most eagerly awaited car for 2006 by Autoblog.it’s readers, so it’ll be a bit of a disappointment to hear the Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Fiat’s president, saying that the Fiat 500 will be on the market in january 2007. One can at least hope that it’ll be shown at one of the motor shows in late 2006. A bit of good news for Italian car fans is that the new Fiat Stilo will debut at the beginning of 2007 too.

The announcement was made by Montezemolo during the annual Ferrari yearend dinner in Maranello. To quote him in full:

«In january 2007 the extraordinary new Fiat 500 will arrive in showrooms, and it’ll be 80 per cent equal to the concpet seen at the Geneva motor show in 2004 [the Trepiuno]; and the new Stilo, which will obviously get a different name»

It’s incredible that no test mules have yet been seen of either model, with such a short time-to-market … Might the prototypes be well hidden in Poland (where the new 500 will be produced) and in Austria (where Magna Steyr is engineering the future Fiat hatchback) ?

I’m curios about this “80%” of similitude with the Trepiùno … The question is: what’s the 20% of difference ? The central exhaust tube will be moved ? No skydome crystal roof ? Will it be some centimeters longer ?

At the moment the only certain thing is that the future Fiat city-car will be built on a shortened Panda platform. The rest is all rumour (including that about a 55 hp version of the 1.3 Multijet diesel engine).

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