Starting from June 1957 the Italterra, said “the ship of 1000 cars”, a merchant vessel re-equipped for transporting cars, shuttled back and forth for about ten years from the ports of Genoa and Savona to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver, to deliver, on behalf of Fiat, every month to the United States and Canada, fully loaded, about a thousand cars, not just sedans or compacts like the 1100, 600 or Multipla, but also sports cars like the 1200 Granluce and the 1500 cabriolet.
The maiden voyage took the first thousand Fiat 600 and Multipla cars directly to California. Arrival in Los Angeles was celebrated with a lavish reception in Beverly Hills attended by authorities of the State of California, high industrial personalities and obviously, in pure Hollywood style, the divas and stars of the time, including Terry Moore, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Clifton Webb, Cobina Wright and Jayne Mansfield. Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini also attended the reception.
After decades, Fiat therefore returned to the United States. The previous time was in 1908 when the Fiat Automobile co was founded in the United States. to build Fiat cars under licence. A Fiat economic taxi is adopted in New York: it is the 1 Fiacre, which in the years before the First World War will be the most popular taxi in New York itself.
In 1909, again in New York, the Fiat Motor co was established. with a plant in Poughkeepsie which will produce some car models until the first post-war period, above all by assembling pieces arriving from Italy. Moreover, when the Fiat 1957 landed in California in 600, cars with long tails (or wings) were well present on the US market that made the average American dream.
Well, the Fiat 600 was meant to be a response to the completely opposite way of conceiving the car. A small car, but roomy enough to hold four people, as compact as a shell, without wings or tails, a masterpiece of mechanical efficiency and with a superlative quality of design, anticipation of what the taste of made in Italy products would have been for Americans in the following decades.
Precisely because of its characteristics, the Fiat 600 was recommended by the "advertising" of the time as the car for ladies; the very blonde Kim Novak will drive a Fiat 600 in the movie "Kiss Me Stupid". The 600 Multipla then met with particular favor among young Californians due to its multiple uses, advertised above all with the 1960 Rome Olympics, when Fiat made available technicians and international sports delegations for the transport of the athletes. , a fleet of over 600 Multiples.
The Fiats were marketed in the USA by the Hoffman Motor Car Company Inc. owned by the Viennese entrepreneur Maximilian Hoffman, who emigrated to the United States during the Second World War and was the same age as another illustrious Viennese in the motoring field, Karl (Italianized as Carlo) Abarth, father of the most famous reworked car of the fifties and sixties, the Fiat 600 Abarth 1000.
Hoffman was an importer throughout the fifties and until the mid-sixties of European cars, including Alfa Romeos, Lancias and Fiats. The commercial network of the Hoffman Company consisted of a few hundred dealers throughout the United States, with the multi-brand Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia headquarters in New York, 430 Park Avenue, on the east coast, and the Fiat headquarters in Beverly on the west coast. Hills, 9130 Wilshire Blvd.
Obviously the sales volumes were always niche, but in a decade Fiat cars sold in North America were more than one hundred thousand. From the second half of the sixties and until the beginning of the eighties, Fiat and Alfa Romeo then moved on to direct importation into the United States with their sports cars, respectively the Fiat 124 Spyder and the Alfa Duetto, made iconic by the cult movie "The Graduate" with Dustin Hoffman.
Between the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, Fiat also attempted to launch a version of the Fiat 131 on the American market, marketed under the name "Superbrava", and of the Ritmo marketed under the name "Strada". Unfortunately it was a resounding failure for two reasons. The first was a kind of gaffe, when it was realized, only after the advertising campaign had already started, that "Ritmo" was the American brand of a condom, and therefore the need to quickly change the name of the car to "Strada".
The second, heavier, due to the poor quality, in years of strong trade union conflicts in the Italian factories, of the cars for stringent American standards, so much so that the acronym Fiat was read as “Fix It Again Tony”, “Fix it again Tony (name by which Italian-Americans are generally identified).”
It will be President Barack Obama who will redeem the image of Fiat recalling, on the occasion of the agreement for the acquisition of Chrysler, that his first car was a Fiat Strada. Fiat will return to California in 2010 when Sergio Marchionne will inaugurate the Motor Village for the marketing of the Fiat 500 at 2025 Figueroa Street in Los Angeles.
