There’s something about Fiat. The Italian brand sells tiny, distinctive cars that resonate with its fans. The cars are puppy-cute, especially in the U.S. where the roads are filled with much larger vehicles. Owners love their two-door Fiat 500s, which came in many flavors including convertibles, pure electric, and the performance Abarth, and some gravitated to the larger models with all-wheel drive and an extra set of doors.
Fiat is a storied Italian brand, dating back to 1899, founded in Turin by Giovanni Agnelli, whose family retains some ownership and control more than 120 years later.
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Today the Fiat brand is part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles or FCA, which has a headquarters in Turin, Italy, and one Auburn Hills, Michigan, which oversees the Chrysler portion of the company. Fiat Group was owned by Fiat S.p.A. until 2014 when it merged into the newly created FCA.
The first Fiat was exported to the U.S. in 1908, and a plant in Poughkeepsie, New York, started making Fiats including the Fiat 60 HP and Fiat 16-20 HP in 1909. The Italian vehicles were expensive and coveted, costing about five times as much as a Ford Model T. The Fiat plant was closed in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I.
Fiat returned to North America in the 1950s with the original Fiat 500, the 600 Multipla, and the Fit 1100, 1200, and 1300. The U.S. also got the Fiat 124 Sport Spider and X1/9. But sales were never strong. The brand had a reputation for poor quality, and Fiat pulled out of North America in 1983.
It wasn’t until 2009, when a bankrupt Chrysler needed help and Fiat took a 20 percent stake in the struggling American automaker, that plans were made to bring the Fiat brand back across the ocean.
Chrysler started making the Fiat 500 two-door car at one of its plants in Mexico for sale in North America. In 2013 the electric 500e was introduced in California, and then-CEO Sergio Marchionne famously said he lost money on each unit he sold. The Fiat Ducato and Doblo commercial vans were rebranded and sold as the Ram ProMaster and Ram ProMaster city.
For the 2020 model year, Fiat announced it was discontinuing the sale and production of the Fiat 500, 500e, and the performance 500 Abarth in North America. In other words, gone are the best-looking, greenest, and most powerful models.
In the U.S., Fiat continues to offer the larger, more practical four-door models. That includes the FiatX, a small all-wheel-drive crossover that was launched in 2015 and has a platform twin in the Jeep Renegade. Also still on the market is the 500L stretched hatchback that arrived in the U.S. in 2013. And Fiat still sells the 124 Spider that was developed in conjunction with the Mazda MX-5.
Fiat’s parents are poised to change yet again. In December 2019, FCA signed a memorandum of understanding with PSA (owners of the Peugeot and Citroën brands) for the two automakers to merge, with an estimate of late 2020 or mid-2021 for the deal to close. The still-to-be-named automaker will be the fourth largest in the world, and some brands could be dropped as part of the reorganization.