Fiat 500 L, Part 1: Found in Hungary

From a Lamborghini to something a little smaller. Not every project in our workshop is rare or fast. Some are just too charming to say no to.

We've loved the Fiat 500 for as long as we can remember, and we'd been talking about buying one since we were 20. One day we stopped talking and simply looked to see if any were for sale. This one turned up quite close to us, in Budapest, so we went to see it.

It's a 1970 Fiat 500 L, and as far as we can tell it had been registered in Hungary since new. It didn't come with much more history than that: no thick folder of bills, no long list of owners. Just the car. We bought it.

What is a 500 L?

The L stands for Lusso, the more luxurious version of the 500 that Fiat introduced in 1968. You can spot one by the tubular guards on its bumpers. Like every 500, it has a small air-cooled two-cylinder engine at the back and a fabric sunroof.

Stripping it down

With so little history, there was only one way to find out what we had: take it apart. The engine came out, the interior came out, and the car was stripped back to a bare shell.

What we found

As with most 500s, the floor had taken the worst of it. There was rust through the floor pans and along the sills, and plenty of old dents and repairs in the bodywork.

Off to the bodyshop

Once we knew what needed doing, the shell went on a trailer to the workshop for its metalwork.

Next: Part 2: New metal