How did this Fiat 500 concept become a Daewoo?

That’s right, it is not. This is the Fiat Cinquecento (or Fiat 500 in Italian – clever, eh?), which was launched to the world in 1991. Not the retro delight that we know today, more of a teeny shoebox almost an entire generation enjoyed as a first car when it was built between 1991 and 1998. For the 1992 Turin motor show, the Italian automobile association held a little competition of sorts, asking a few design studios to come up with their ideas for a more modern take on the Cinquecento. 

This is indeed a concept. But not quite the concept we’re going to be looking at today. This is the ID Cinquecento, the entry from Giugiaro’s Italdesign outfit. Not particularly retro looking, but the fabric roof and door outlines were meant to be a nod to the classic 500. This was a full-size clay model displayed at the show – clearly the Italian design house was taken with its efforts, because it came back the following year with a working version. 

This is the concept. The Lucciola concept, in fact. The Fiat Cinquecento concept evolved into this version at the 1993 Bologna motor show, a fun take on the idea of a tiny three-door hatchback that majors on fun, lifestyle, and any number of other buzzwords that carmakers love to fling around.

It’s a very perky, fun looking little car – the roof retracts in two sections, so you can either open the sunroof or lose the entire back end of the car into the bootlid. But the Lucciola was a fun car with a very serious message, for it was made out of aluminium (a great way to save some weight over the ID Cinquecento’s solid clay construction) and recycled plastics, to hammer home its eco credentials. 

It's all very minimalist inside the Lucciola concept, but there’s a delightful blue shagpile carpet lining the interior, yellow landing targets for your bum on the seats and a nifty backpack storage solution hanging on the passenger side of the dashboard. What a great idea, just in case you wanted to take your mint imperials and old parking tickets away with you once you parked up.

There’s a lot happening under the bonnet here. The Lucciola was principally powered by an electric motor powering the rear wheels, with a 30-mile range. This was extended by the inclusion of a two-cylinder 7.4bhp diesel engine, which would generate another 500 miles of range until the juice ran out. Sounds like something we could do with now…

The Daewoo Matiz? That it does. And for good reason. You might remember the Jaguar Kensington concept which was also put together by Italdesign somewhat independently of the manufacturer – that car ended up becoming the Daewoo Leganza. Clearly Daewoo was the big spender of the mid-Nineties, hoovering up other carmakers’ cast-offs and sending them into production as if they were its own. Italdesign shopped around and ended up selling the Lucciola idea to the Korean firm and it did indeed become the Matiz. The true heir to the Cinquecento? No, not really. 

The flyweight Cinquecento soldiered on for seven years, with over 1.1m units built during that time. Sadly it failed to keep pace with the industry developments, becoming a little (dare we say it) unfashionable. Never fear – with all those cool suggestions from Italian design houses back in 1992, Fiat couldn’t fail to reinvent its tiny icon and set the sales charts on fire, could it? Oh wait. No, what it did was heavily facelift the Cinquecento and add a hundred on to the name. The Fiat Seicento (or Fiat 600 in Italian – clever, eh?) went on sale between 1998 and 2007, eventually replaced by a proper version of the Fiat 500 that we’re still enjoying today.