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Ignored by classic-car historians - who are generally obsessed with the BMC Mini when it comes to post-war small cars - the Fiat 127 was an important machine, a new, more grown-up kind of front-wheel-drive small saloon that was the first of a new breed, the 'supermini'.
You could have two- or three-door hatch versions (the latter didn't appear until '72) but the point was that the 127 was a superb piece of packaging, thanks to the combination of space-saving MacPherson strut suspension all-round with a transverse engine layout. What's more, its bodyshell was light, so its 903 cc gave it the performance of a contemporary 1500 cc car: 85 mph, 0-60 in 15 seconds. Noisy and spartan to modern eyes, the 127 had a shiny vinyl-trimmed cabin that could accommodate five at a pinch and, driven normally, it would turn in 42 mpg.
Utterly rational yet fun to drive, the 127 became the mainstay of the Fiat range all over the world. If you didn't drive one at home in the '70s, the chances are you hired one on holiday in Spain or Italy, keeping yourself amused by doing clutch-less gearchanges. The 127 had a dozen-year production run of almost four million examples (production continued well into the '90s in Argentina) but when did you last see one?
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