Fiat’s microcar push has been approved at the highest level – but is the Topolino the perfect Vatican runaround?
Should Pope Leo ever find himself bored, the roads that wind through the Vatican City Gardens would make for a fantastic rally stage. It would be quite a short stage, admittedly, given that the sacerdotal-monarchical city state measures just 0.19 square miles, making it around the same size as London’s Regent’s Park and comfortably the world’s smallest country.
Still, in that confined space the access roads that run behind St Peter’s Basilica, rising to the Palace of the Governorate and through the beautifully kept gardens, pack in steep climbs and sharp descents, numerous switchback hairpins, some long straights and a few technical twisting sections. And I can attest they’re all types of driving fun – even if it doesn’t take long to complete a lap.
With its tiny dimensions and fewer than 900 residents, including a number of cardinals and one Holy Father, everything about the Vatican is small, although you wouldn’t know that if you tried to stroll through St Peter’s Square on a busy Sunday at the height of summer. Behind the basilica, though, and hidden by high walls from the chaotic streets of Rome that surround the Vatican, things are far more peaceful.
That said, the state’s roads are surprisingly busy. Among the variety of cars used by the people who commute to work here are various official vehicles, such as the Gendarmerie’s fleet of Volkswagen Passats, loaded-up vans being used by the gardeners and even tractors that transport bulky items around. St Martha’s Square, located next to the main access gate, even has its own petrol station (and judging by what the pumps tell me, even the pope isn’t immune from rising energy prices). There’s also a bank of 22kW EV chargers hidden behind the Governorate’s palace.
Generally, though, these are private roads, just as they have been since the Vatican City state was founded through the Lateran Treaty back in 1929. You can’t just rock up at the gate, flash an international driving permit and take a tour. In fact, the only way most visitors can even tour the gardens on foot is as part of a private guided visit. And yet here I am, pushing a vehicle to its absolute limit on those very roads.
Okay, yes, the vehicle in question is a Fiat Topolino quadricycle, so that ‘limit’ is a not particularly fast 28mph. And, yes, my drive does come as part of a somewhat surreal convoy of Topolinos, escorted by the Gendarmerie (in one of their Passats), who seem determined not to let anyone have too much fun. Still, by hanging back on one of the longer straight roads, I can create just enough space to hit the Topolino’s V-max before some judicious braking is required to avoid rear-ending the Topolino ahead and sparking the world’s cutest pile-up.
The Topolino has just gone on sale in the UK but was launched three years ago in Italy. It is in effect a Citroën Ami that has been given a makeover after quaffing a few Aperol Spritzes to imbue it with the joys of la dolce vita. Citroën originally developed the machine, but former Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares, spotting a business opportunity in L6-compliant quadricycles that sit below cars in the classifications for four-wheel vehicles, suggested Fiat might like to offer its own version. Fiat boss Olivier François agreed, but instead of Tavares’s vision of a simple rebadge, he invested in giving the Topolino a new retro-themed body and some other design flourishes.
And it has been quite the hit – so much so that Fiat is expanding its micromobility efforts as part of its wider brief to be ‘big in small cars’. So the Topolino will soon be joined by the Tris, a three-wheeled commercial EV with echoes of the Piaggio Ape. There will also be the Multiplina, a four-seat quad that will be built to L7 rules that allow it more power and practicality.
For François, these initiatives all fit Fiat’s heritage. “Fiat was doing micromobility before the word even existed,” he says, citing the 1936 Topolino, the 500 Multipla from 1957 and the 1972 126 as three examples that, combined, accounted for close to 10 million sales. “Today, micromobility is no longer a niche.”
That’s undoubtedly true: e-bikes and e-scooters have made powered transport more accessible to many, and electric mopeds are growing in popularity. But – and take this from someone who used to edit an e-mobility website – while there’s huge interest in the topic, it’s hard to make money from it, especially for car firms. BMW retains an interest in electric motorcycles, but other car makers have sampled micromobility and soon dropped it: just look at Renault, which previously offered the Twizy but recently scrapped its Mobilize division that was developing a range of micromobility vehicles. Even Stellantis stablemate Citroën has shown little interest in building on the Ami’s success.
So why does Fiat see an opportunity where others don’t? “It depends how you do it,” says Gaetano Thorel, Fiat’s European boss. “With the Topolino we took an internal product, the Ami, and injected our Fiat DNA, giving to the customer something they look at and smile. When you compare Topolino with other micromobility, you immediately know it’s a mini-car; it’s not a scooter—there’s a sense of safety and space.”
Giorgio Neri, Fiat’s micromobility boss, adds that the category could become even tougher in the future given the likely arrival of Chinese competition, which, he says, “will be a war of prices, because we know how they work”. But he adds: “We are trying not only to compete on affordability, which is a master requirement, but we try to add emotions.”
Neri notes that the Topolino and Ami have significantly grown the quadricycle class, and he is pushing for European legislators to consider the sales of such vehicles when assessing a manufacturer’s CO2 emissions—insisting they have a key role in reducing carbon output. And that is being put to the test in the Vatican.
The world’s smallest state, you see, has plenty of interest in Fiat’s smallest vehicles. It has just agreed a deal for a fleet of 30 micromobility machines – split between the Topolino and Tris – that will be put to use in the Vatican. No, neither will be used as a Popemobile (judging by recent videos, he seems to be after a Ferrari Luce); instead, Topolinos will be used to help staff whizz between buildings, while the gardeners will make use of the fleet of Tris. It’s part of the Vatican’s attempt to make its vehicle fleet entirely zero-emission by the end of the decade, an initiative somewhat brilliantly labelled Ecological Conversion 2030.
Frankly, if I worked in the Vatican – a highly unlikely proposition, I assure you – I would be loving the deal: the Topolino is perfect for the state. It has the power to zip up the hills, you can tackle the hairpins with speed and gusto and the relatively quiet roads mean you feel really quite safe despite driving a tiny car. And the 46-mile range that feels so inhibiting in some settings? Not a problem in a location this tiny. Heck, even the Topolino’s small size isn’t really a problem. I mean, the lack of a boot would make it difficult if you owned a dog, but according to the Vatican City website nobody living there currently owns a pet of any kind, so that’s not an issue.
“The Topolino and Tris feel at home here,” says François, who has pretty deep links with the Vatican: he organised the first-ever live concert here. “They’re not cars designed to show power; they’re small, simple machines designed to serve. The arrogance that sometimes comes with the idea of the automobile goes away with these.”
Most Topolinos, of course, won’t be put to use on the quiet, smooth roads of the Vatican (as an aside, potholes aren’t an issue here); they will be tasked with transporting people through bustling (to put it politely) urban areas such as Rome. So, reluctantly, it’s time to leave the Vatican’s walled tranquillity and venture onto the streets of the Italian capital.
The contrast is clear from the moment you pass through the Vatican gates, although I don’t have much time to take that in on account of the absolute chaos, with three lines of traffic somehow filling two lanes on the road and motorcycles zipping in all directions.
This is where the Topolino’s tiny size is both blessing and curse. It is incredibly easy to manoeuvre, and can whizz by parked cars that slow bigger vehicles, but it also can’t filter through gaps like bikes, and it’s hard not to be intimidated by just about everything else on the road. You only have 8bhp to deploy, remember. Tiny door mirrors and the lack of a rear-view mirror pose a challenge when you need to spend as much time watching what’s charging up behind as you do looking ahead, and the lack of power steering means it’s all quite hard work – especially when on a boiling hot day the only cooling comes from the Topolino’s handheld fan, which is… of questionable effectiveness.
That said, it’s superbly suited to Rome’s tight, twisting roads and many narrow lanes. And people seem to like the Topolino: despite running a pair side by side at traffic-blocking low speed to get some photos, hardly anyone honked their horns or tried to barge us out of the way.
That’s the joy of the Topolino – and of other micromobility vehicles: they’re not for everyone and every occasion, but if your needs match their specific abilities, they’re brilliant. That, of course, makes them a harder sell in the UK, where drivers must have a full licence (in Italy an L6 vehicle can be driven from the age of 14) and left-hand-drive-only status can put people off. But in the unlikely event that you should find yourself with the chance to drive around the Vatican, I know just the thing for the job.
