In a workshop in Turin \u2014 the historic home of Italian carmaker Fiat \u2014 vintage 500 models are getting a makeover with electric engines.<\/p>\n
Classic Fiat 500s, made between 1957 and 1975, are being brought \u201cinto the 21st century\u201d, said Giovanni Gentile, owner of Officine Gentile.<\/p>\n
Outside the workshop, rusty hulks of the tiny, curvy cars are lined up waiting their turn.<\/p>\n
Inside, sparks fly as workers cut and weld the metal. The cars then get re-painted, re-wired and the electric engines are installed.<\/p>\n
The charging socket is hidden behind the vintage Fiat symbol at the front of the car.<\/p>\n
Many of the re-vamped cars are painted in pastel colours and some are convertibles.<\/p>\n
The retrofitted cars sell for around 40-50,000 euros, with convertibles for up to 80,000 euros.<\/p>\n
The original Fiat 500 became a design icon and some 4.2 million models were made.<\/p>\n
They are still popular with vintage car enthusiasts the world over and regularly attract large rallies around Italy and beyond.<\/p>\n
The model was relaunched in 2007 with some modern tweaks and is now also sold electric.<\/p>\n
Giorgio Pagliero, sales director at Officine Gentile, said the workshop wanted to maintain \u201cthe legacy and historic nature\u201d of the cars while giving them \u201ca second life\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a workshop in Turin \u2014 the historic home of Italian carmaker Fiat \u2014 vintage 500 models are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1019,121454,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-408309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}