► Fiat’s Topolino takes on the Alps
► A 28mph top speed, 47-mile range…
► From our friends at Auto Zeitung
Late afternoon, mid-May at the Jaufen Pass. The first corner-eaters of the 2024 summer season are already having fun up here: BMW GS clans, racing bikers, packs of sports car road-trippers. And then jaws drop, eyes become saucer-sized and faces turn pale white as all eyes become fixed on the Fiat Topolino, which is casually whirring into the last free corner in the parking lot, between the 911 GT3 and GTS of a Porsche Club group. Speechlessness is spreading. Somehow the tough guys with their carbon ceramic racing brakes, carbonfibre seat shells and magnesium wheels sense that they have just been declared wimps by something mint green, googly-eyed with a 28mph top speed.
It takes almost ten minutes until someone dares to approach the tiny car, takes a quick look into the cockpit and then asks what seems to be the most important question for him: ‘Is it also available with a leather steering wheel?’ – Nope. And to prevent other questions in this category: Instead of air conditioning, the Topolino has folding windows. The football stadium-like plastic seats can only be adjusted lengthways on the driver’s side, manually of course. Why is the driver’s door hinged at the back and opens to the front, and exactly the other way around on the passenger side? ‘Because you only have to produce one door and that saves costs.’
Admittedly, I wouldn’t have predicted this situation this morning. Start at 8:00am in Innsbruck, with an uncertain outcome, the Alps ahead of me and two open questions: the Topolino can be used as a light vehicle in Europe for ages 15 and up, but can it be suitable for adults? And, with its teeny range and low power, can it actually manage alpine stages, like the 45-mile trip from Innsbruck over the Brenner and up to the Jaufen Pass? Black and white photos from the 1950s and 60s are buzzing in my head, when whole families in air-cooled small cars whizzed over the Alps in search of the south and had to give the gasping, overheated little ones a break to cool down every few minutes. Back then you didn’t just drive on the Brenner motorway to South Tyrol, you had to work through the journey: drive, break, drive. The family component is part of the story, which is why I persuade my youngest daughter to come along in the service of science. Lovis, 10, doesn’t want to at first, then I show her a photo of the ‘cuuute’ Topolino – that changes everything. With the extra-passenger and our light luggage, we stay just under the Topolino’s permissible load of 150kg.
Smartphone clamped into the small holder on the dashboard, entered the Edelweisshütte on the Jaufen Pass as the destination and off we went. The little Fiat isn’t allowed to use expressways and motorways, we ‘avoid’ them in the navigation app and this causes our hearts to pound right at the start of the journey: we are guided onto a hair-raisingly steep private road, and barely make it at walking pace. The pace is creeping up – but our confidence in the Topolino’s ability to climb is at rock bottom.
What happens next, however, is far more than convincing. Humming quietly, the Topolino pulls up the mountain, conquers the long inclines towards Matrei and Steinach with confidence-inspiring perseverance, and even maintains its top speed on the more moderate passages. Contrary to what was expected, the Topolino rarely becomes an obstacle to traffic; on the winding route, only a few cars drive faster than 30mph on average, but around 50mph on the straights and as low as 15mph on the bends – I just keep going consistently in the Topolino to keep them off my back.
The little one has a surprisingly solid chassis, the steering never lets you lose your feel for the road even in wet bends and so we swing bravely towards the Brenner: being caught up on the straights, pulling away in the bends. Only a few lead-footed people have higher ambitions, fly up from behind with verve and I let the little Fiat quickly make room for them to keep everybody happy.
At the top of the Brenner Pass we start to calculate: 26 miles have been covered, the display shows a remaining range of 14 miles. Even after the nine-mile route from the Brenner Pass down to Sterzing, it shows the on-board computer still indicates a range of 11 miles – but the smartphone heartlessly calculates a distance of 11.4 miles to the Edelweisshütte. Beaten by 0.4 of a mile – damn it.
Only Lovis doesn’t understand the excitement: ‘I thought we’d go out for ice cream first anyway?’ So, that’s what we do. The Topolino draws hydroelectric AC current from a hijacked 230-volt socket for three hours and we get four scoops of green apple-lavender, passion fruit-basil and Nutella in a gelateria at Sterzinger Zwölferturm.
Later, in the shade of the mountain forest, we eagerly strive upwards and are happy about the smooth response of the suspension on the slippery road and groan when rough bumps cause the Fiat with its short wheelbase to buck. Once again the motto is full throttle, hard in the corners, decisive on the straights and here too, on the much more demanding Jaufen Pass, the little Fiat shows no real weakness: only on the very steepest sections does the speed drop below 18mph as soon as the gradient increases A little more relaxed, the Topolino carries on. Up above the tree line, then with a real alpinist feeling and spectacular exhilaration through the last hairpin bends below the top of the pass.
As we arrive, the little Fiat shows 11 miles of remaining range. The Porsche gang asks, rolling their eyes, where we want to go today. ‘Meran,’ I lie, ‘that’s only 40 kilometers downhill and a gelato break away.’
‘Pizza,’ says Lovis, ‘Pizza this time!’