A Tiny Fiat With Enormous Power

June 15, 2018

I’ve long harbored a dream. This dream is to take a ridiculously small car: something like a Nissan Micra, or a Mini Cooper, and put a V6 or a V8 under the hood. I’m yet to do it, and it would almost certainly be an extremely fiddly project, but I love the concept. Compact cars, especially in the European and Japanese sense, are the ultimate sleepers. No one would ever assume that under their unassuming exterior, they have more power than some classic muscle cars. Luckily, I appear not to be the only person who has had this dream. This 1959 Fiat 600, known as the “Angry Mosquito,” is set to go under the hammer at Barrett-Jackson’s Northeast auction at the Mohegan Resort and Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut.

Built in 2012 by a fabricator in Prescott, Arizona, the car is a beautiful experiment from the fringes of the street rod world. In its original guise, the Fiat had a tiny engine. When I say tiny, I mean it. They topped out at a whopping 843cc, or 51ci. That left the builders of this terrific restomod with very little room to work with, certainly not enough for a V6. Instead, under the hood of the Angry Mosquito, you’ll find a Mazda 12A rotary engine, the kind found in the Mazda RX-7. This little wonder produces 220 horsepower, and in a car weighing just 1300 lbs, that gives you a lot of oomph to play with. To help it along the way, the engine has been upgraded with parts including a Weber 40mm dual carb. The four-speed gearbox has been taken from a Volkswagen, and has been rebuilt and upgraded. Add to this a hydraulic clutch and a brake master cylinder system, and the project is shown in all its unhinged glory.

The Fiat’s interior has seen extensive remodelling work: there’s now a roll cage and a brand new set of gauges. To keep things ticking over, there’s also a rear-mounted aluminum radiator. The Fiat was built to handle like a mid-engined sports car, and from the sound of it, it will achieve that goal easily.

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