“This car: 60 years old today!” the petrol pump attendant said, pointing at a newspaper headline celebrating the occasion. It read “La Macchina Piu Amata Dagli Italiani” — The Most Beloved Italian Car.
'I am a Cinquecento expert," he announced with braggadocio as he filled the tank, dipped the oil and cast an eye over the engine.To be honest, there wasn't much for my husband and me to check. Ours was a 1965 model, and with no radiator, fuel gauge, air-con, radio, or even seatbelts, it was very much a lo-fi driving experience, which suited me fine.We were heading south from Sorrento, along the coast to explore the wilder, lesser-known region of Cilento. Seldom visited by non-Italian tourists, who tend to stick to the Amalfi Coast, Cilento is the summer destination of the Napoletani, who converge there every August.As a worldwide road tripper and lifelong owner/willing victim of vintage vehicles,
I found the Fiat 500 the obvious choice for this trip through back-roads Italy - as crucial to cultural immersion as gorging on mozzarella and hitting the limoncello.
And anyway, air-con, satnav, electric windows? Who needs 'em?
There is something fundamentally satisfying about the physical, analogue engagement of winding a chrome lever, navigating with a paper map, and indeed, the almost primeval skill of gauging just the right amount of throttle and choke to start an engine.Then there are the noises, smells and vibrations that have been eliminated from the modern motoring experience.
Why have a pine tree-shaped air freshener dangling from your mirror when you can wind down the window and let in the scent of real pine?
We bade arrivederci to Sergio, cranked open the sunroof and nudged our way through Sorrento's horn-honking streets.
But we soon left the traffic jams of Amalfi behind and as the road opened up, the Cinquecento revealed itself to us as the ultimate time-travel machine.
Our first stop in the past was way beyond even the birth of the Fiat 500, all the way back to 600BC when the Greeks came to settle in Italy and built the city of Paestum on the Tyrrhenian coast.A world away from Europe's more famous ancient sites, Paestum's languid atmosphere provided a dreamlike amble through time.
The ruins are set in pleasingly untamed grounds with no crowds - but Paestum's amphitheatre, the city walls and the temples with their grand Doric columns are some of the best preserved in the world.
It was while cruising Paestum's main drag that we first experienced the "Cinquecento effect". Old men sitting at roadside cafés stood to wave as we drove by, animated by nostalgia.Our attempts to pay parking fees were brushed aside and strangers struck up conversations about the car, sharing their own Cinquecento stories - tales of overloaded family holidays, courting couples and comedy breakdowns flowed.
Our Fiat was photographed and patted with a fondness usually reserved for a beloved pet.This was the car that got Italians on the road. Launched in 1957 to a population still in the throes of post-war deprivation, the original came with a price tag of 560,000 lira (the equivalent of €270), making it accessible to all.
With its cute yet cool curves and stylish detailing, the Fiat 500 won the hearts of both men and women and, as we were discovering, its place in the national psyche has never wavered.
As we made our way inland, the country became wilder and the road twisted through mountainous terrain, where deep gorges carve through the hills and glassy green rivers provided swimming opportunities.
The roads were empty here, occasionally revealing sleepy villages. Sun-bleached plaster crumbled beneath balconies festooned with geraniums and laundry. Elderly ladies in housecoats sat chatting on doorsteps, their brightly coloured Crocs (worn with socks) their only concession to the comforts of the 21st century.Arriving in time for sunset at Santa Maria di Castellabate, a gentle seaside town, we watched families making their evening promenade and teenagers playing beach volleyball against a streaky pink sky.
Our B&B was tucked among olive groves near the medieval hilltop town of Castellabate. This is the nearest Cilento comes to having a de facto tourist attraction.
The picture-perfect town provided the set for the 2010 Italian film, Benvenuti al Sud.
A box office hit in Italy, its legacy is the bus-loads of visitors from Milan and Rome who come to admire Castellabate's alleys, piazzas and 12th-century castle.But the journey was all the richer for it - we were most definitely alive - and living in a '60s road movie.
The sea to our right, the open road ahead, the childlike sensation that anything could happen. Maybe it was the sun, but we began to hatch wild plans to abandon our real lives, kidnap the Fiat, keep driving and see where the road took us.It is perhaps fitting, then, that the next day our Cinquecento conked out completely. As predicted, it was easy to diagnose - a sheared clip on the throttle cable - and just as easy to fix, or at least bodge.Seduced by our road trip, I found myself caught up in Sebastiano's dream, making idle enquiries about property prices and picturing our rustic villa - with a Cinquecento parked outside, naturally.
5 Fiat 500 facts
First produced in Turin in 1957 as "the people's car", the original Fiat 500, known in Italy as the Cinquecento, featured a 497cc, two-cylinder engine and was less than 3m in length.
Early models had rear-hinged "suicide doors". For safety reasons, these were replaced with front-hinged ones in 1965 but Italian men complained that the new doors prevented them looking at women's legs as they got in and out of the car.In 2005 two Italians, Danilo Elia and Fabrizio Bonserio, drove a 1973 Fiat 500 from Turin to Beijing, a journey of 16,000km over three months. The aim was to symbolically link the two Olympic cities (Turin, winter 2006 and Beijing, summer 2008).
Production of the Fiat 500 ended in 1975 but in 2007 a new model was launched to great success. Prior to this, a 2004 study revealed there were more than 600,000 original Cinquecentos still on the roads of Italy.
A Fiat 500 can be hired from €120 per day through Spider Lifestyle.
© The Sunday Telegraph..