Definitely time for some catching up - I'll do this in a couple of posts otherwise I'll be here all night.
2013 continued to be as busy as it started - I did manage a few trips out in my little car over the summer! We also managed a quick trip to Austria to have a look round Salzburg and Vienna and a bit of mountain driving (and cake eating and coffee drinking - the Austrians know how to do cake and coffee). We were driving a Mercedes Hire car - it was ok, but we weren't convinced by their parking brake system.
We've done some stints of mountain driving before - it's good fun, not necessarily for those without a head for heights and definitely a summer pastime! The views are incredible, some of the roads seem to cling to almost nothing and the villages tucked in and around corners are exactly what you expect - little chalet houses nestling in valleys surrounded by meadows full of cows.
The cities are beautiful as well. The centre of Salzburg is not the sort of place to drive round; narrow picturesque streets which are far more suited to walking round - you can't imagine Julie Andrews and and the rest of the cast of the Sound of Music nipping round in a car can you? No.
Vienna is far more car centric, like most capital cities. Many of the larger roads round the centre of town, like the Ringstrasse are large wide avenues, with trams buses and cars all vying for position. Some of the side roads are quieter - it's a bit like seeing the busy chaos of the Marylebone Road in London compared to the quieter roads round the back of Soho or Covent Garden.
One evening while we were in Vienna, we saw this:
Looks like a Fiat 500 doesn't it?
It's acutally a Puch 500, built by Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Austria.
Steyr had manufactured mainly military vehicles during world war Two and in the mid 1950s decided it was time to start car production again. There wasn't sufficient money to design a new model from scratch, so the company negotiated with Fiat to base a design on the 500. Fiat was to supply the basic body shell, Steyr were to provide the engine, transmission and carriage. The engine was a two-cylinder (16 hp/12 kW) flat engine which was found to suit the mountain routes of Austria well.
The first Steyr-Puch 500 launched in 1957 and proved to more popular than anticipated.
There were a number of updates over the years - as the 500 itself developed, so did the Steyr version; in 1959 it gained a metal roof option rather than the folding cloth version (the 500 D, D standing for Dach, meaning roof in German). Engine upgrades also followed and estate versions, again with more engine options. These eventually lead to a 650 series of models - similar to the route taken by the developments of the 500 back in Italy.
By the late 60s, they were flying out the factory and almost the entire car minus the engine was being shipped in from Fiat. The only part that was still being made by Steyr was the engine. The model was called the 500 S at this point (like the one in the picture). From the outside, other than the Steyr badges, it looks pretty much like a Fiat 500.
The 500 isn't the only car which Fiat shared the designs for - the 124 had various guises. Other manufacturers have had similar arrangements; some have been straight rebadgings for specific markets such as the Mazda 121/Ford Fiesta. In some cases there have been far more subtle sharing of designs and parts, such as the Fiat 500/Ford Ka.
Much of this is about cost saving - if the design can be used more than once, it keeps the costs down. If there are common parts which can be shared, it keeps the costs down. If the same production lines can be used, it keeps the costs down. With the economic woes which have been rippling round the world, it helps keep a few car companies ticking over and hopefully means cheaper spare parts (yes, I haven't noticed this much either, but the thought is nice).
One other quirk of this sharing of designs is just how far some or the shared parts go. I still remember various jokes about the Austin Allegro door handles on Range Rovers (which apparently also appear on a Lotus Esprit), or asking a colleague how many Peugeot parts were fitted on his Lotus Elise.
The best story I heard was from a former colleague who begrudingly had to sell his Lancia Delta Integrale. During a test drive the potential buyer was looking over the car when he suddenly laughed. My colleague thinking something may have been wrong, asked if everything was alright. "Yes," the buyer replied. "Those are the same column switches that are fitted in my Ferrari Testarossa."
Who knows what parts are lurking under the bonnet of your humble little runabout...
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