1973 Fiat 500 F Bambina [110F]
1973 Fiat 500 F [110F] in Wellington Paranormal, TV Series, 2018-2025 Ep. 1.05
Class: Cars, Supermini — Model origin: 
— Built in: 
— Made for: 
![1973 Fiat 500 F Bambina [110F]](/i001233485.jpg)
![[*]](/res/star.png){kind=small}
Minor action vehicle or used in only a short scene
Comments about this vehicle
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◊ 2019-02-11 22:44 |
Fake plate ? (edit : Ah, I see, it wasn't 112 but 1I2, so the plate can be read as "half pint") -- Last edit: 2019-02-12 12:52:42 |
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◊ 2019-02-12 00:35 |
As per this, no it's real (and apparently Bambina was the name used for New Zealand-assembled variants) https://www.carjam.co.nz/car/?plate=1I2PNT |
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◊ 2019-02-12 02:38 |
It was discussed here: /vehicle.php?id=386305 Unfortunately the link that DSL provided seems to be broken now. |
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◊ 2019-02-12 03:52 |
Yes that link seems totally dead. But found another here. "New Zealand welcomed the twin-cylinder 500 back in 1959. Government policy then dictated every move in the new car market, and every single vehicle required an import licence – a commodity so tightly rationed that it was known in the motor trade as a licence to print money. The Fiat 500 reached New Zealand in small numbers, assembled in its home factory in Turin. It was motor industry entrepreneur Noel Turner, Italian diplomats and Turner’s influential friends in high places that secured 300 licences annually for the baby Fiat to built at the Turner family’s VW Motors plant in Otahuhu. Assembly with as much local content as possible was the fast track to increased licence quotas, and nobody played the game better than Noel Turner. The 500 thanks to the low cost of the imported kits, reached the dizzy height of almost 50 per cent local content once labour and materials such as glass and upholstery were added. It became a fast seller in car-starved New Zealand. Women especially fancied it, partly because they didn’t face a wait of months or years for a British Mini. The distributor Torino Motors played on its appeal to women, providing the 500 first prize in the Miss New Zealand beauty pageant from 1966. Torino also entered an all-woman team in the Wills Six Hour production car classic at Pukekohe in 1965. Evelyn Hadfield and Margaret Hough brought the 500 home last – of course – but maintained its three year run of perfect reliability in the event. A Kiwi claim to fame is the name “Bambina” Torino Motors Rob Elliott decided the name was needed to lift the image of the improved 500F version in 1965. More than five thousand 500s made it to New Zealand, but today fewer than 400 are registered with the LTSA. Its global cult status and high value saw hundreds shipped to Japan and the US in the 1990s." Also this account of a 1963 NZ 500: "This example began its life in New Zealand and was built under an exclusive arrangement with the New Zealand Government that required at least 51% of all parts to be locally sourced. The body was welded together in Italy and final assembly took place in Auckland, using New Zealand glass, NZ tyres, NZ seatbelts, NZ rubber gaskets, etc." |
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◊ 2019-02-12 05:06 |
I did find it in the Wayback Machine, it was alive as recent as August: https://web.archive.org/web/20180807084606/http://nzfiat500.com/ |
