Driving – The Panda

It's summer in Italy and our Roman correspondent, Victoria Cece is guiding us on a journey across Italy. With her insights, we're traveling through stories, histories, and the vivid tableau of Italian life. Today, she is literally driving us on this journey!

Cars hold a special place in Italian culture, symbolizing more than just a mode of transportation. For many Italians, cars represent a blend of art, beauty, elegance, engineering excellence, quality, and national pride.

Join us as Victoria drives us down the path of the single, most iconic symbol of Italy's national identity, maybe even more so than pasta.
Fiat 500 in Blue

America has Pickup Trucks and Italy has a Panda


When we think of Italian history, we think of cars. We think of fast cars – Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini. But the true car that defines Italy is the FIAT Panda. Not the fashionable FIAT 500, the Panda.

Forty-four years ago, the FIAT Panda arrived as the answer to almost every Italian’s prayers – a car that was affordable, practical, and, above all, not French.

The Panda’s uniquely boxy design was nothing anyone had ever seen before. Its four-door design was lightweight and compact, with the fuel efficiency the everyday consumer craves. It is small and powerful and will swerve seamlessly through the cobblestone streets of ancient villages, the busted-up concrete in Rome, or up and down the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. The original Panda was barely 12 feet long and less than 5 feet tall but was still able to tackle Italy’s definitively diverse terrain.

The first Panda models were discontinued in 2003. Though FIAT makes new iterations of the Panda, the O.G. models are still found everywhere in Italy, as Italians hold on to them like gold.

And I’ll tell you exactly why.

I will never forget the moment when it snowed in Napoli. That’s right – it snowed in Napoli, it never happens, but, in 2017, it did.

No one was prepared, not the tourists and definitely not southern Italians. Snowfall is reserved for the North of Italy in a faraway place like the Dolomites and Mont Blanc. Down in the volcanic hills and mountains of Campania, snow was as strange as someone speaking Swedish at a local bar.

When the snow happened, it trapped us in a ditch on the side of the road, on the side of a mountain, with my boyfriend and his uncle.

Whether it was divine intervention or the news traveling fast in small towns, a local arrived like an apparition in a red FIAT Panda. The Panda, a 1990 vintage, felt no bigger than a shoebox on a sled, but it scooped us up with ease and slid us safely down to our hotel. Did I mention the Panda was red? The paint looked still fresh.

An Italian coffee bar (also known as a caffeteria or, as Italians simply call it, a bar) is not just about coffee. Coffee bars are the social centers of Italian neighborhoods, serving as venues for both lively conversations and solitary moments of reflection. The culture around Italian coffee bars emphasizes the importance of indulging in life’s pleasures, no matter how small, underscoring the age-old Italian philosophy of la dolce vita – the sweet life. Sure, there are coffee traditions that many love and cherish. Ordering a cappuccino after a meal at a restaurant is not a thing, but here is the thing: an Italian coffee bar isn’t a rigid place – it’s a safe space where you can drink what you wish and go as you please.

And, just like many customs we adore in Italy today, this wasn’t always the case.

A Little Panda History

While the FIAT 500 may be an Instagram star thanks to its role in popular movies – charming us on the streets of Rome in La Dolce Vita and scaring us 63 years later with Tom Cruise being chased through the Eternal City in Dead Reckoning; the FIAT Panda is a practical car.

The FIAT Panda represents Italy’s history as a highly productive and innovative country, which goes beyond sports cars.

FIAT’s birth in 1899 came with a different set of goals than its competitors. Rather than producing high-end cars for the wealthy, the company sought to create cars that everyone could access but with the same ingenuity and quality as a luxury car brand.

Fast-forward to post-World War II Italy, FIAT had some success. But then, Italian car companies faced a real crisis: Italians were buying more French cars.

It’s the mid-70s. Working-class Italians began purchasing Citroens and Renaults as reliable commuter cars. At the time, the Italian market was quite slim on affordable and fuel-efficient vehicles.

For car companies, seeing the average Giovanni driving something not Italian was heartbreaking.

FIAT got to work quickly – calling upon the prodigal automobile designer Giorgetto Giugiaro to place poetry into a simple commuter car.

The resulting car? Giugiaro honestly described the Panda best: “like a pair of jeans: a simple, practical article of clothing without pretense.”

The Panda isn’t a rounded car that resembles – well – a Panda. The name was inspired by Roman mythology, the Roman goddess Empanda, the protector of travelers.

From the poetry of its practical design to its name – one aspect stands: the Panda was built with purpose. Its boxy shape isn’t exactly sexy – it’s quite utilitarian, a design approach echoing an era of post-war Italy, still stained by the functional, rationalist designs loved by the Fascist regime.

As we know, when brutal things end, often beautiful things can come. This utilitarian foundation, combined with Italy’s hedonistic heart, resulted in a practical and poetic creation: the Panda.

In fact, according to many accounts, the FIAT Panda was Giugiaro’s favorite car design – Giugiaro was the creative behind many BMWs, Maseratis, the original DeLorean, and the occasional football stadium.

Giugiaro’s 4×4 Panda design, released in 1983, changed the world. A working-class car with four-wheel drive, the Panda became the car of the people. It could be driven by a businessman in Rome or off-road by farmers in the hills of Tuscany.

One can say that the FIAT Panda symbolizes Italy as well as unifies it – the simple, compact, unassuming car can get you where you need to go, but inside, there’s a deep complexity of detail and art, which lies at the soul of all things Italian. In this way, the FIAT Panda has become the working man’s Ferrari – a diamond in the rough that will live in your garage forever, passed on for generations to come. And, always best in red.

Victoria Cece, Author and Contributor to Massican.

From the top:

Classic Blue Fiat 500 parked on a street/Alamy Stock.

Classic Red Fiat 500 parked on a street in SicilyAlamy Stock.

Our Writer, Victoria Cece: Image courtesy of the author.

Legal:

FIAT Panda and FIAT 500 are registered trademarks and properties of FIAT S.p.A. and are not affiliated with Massican.