Fiat 16

The Fiat Tipo 16, also written Fiat 16, was a heavy lorry launched in 1911 by the Italian maker Fiat V.I. Fiat began studying it in 1910 as a multipurpose truck for heavy haulage, because its leading truck of the time, the Fiat 15, could not meet that need. It was built only in small numbers and is remarkable for its load capacity: records and articles of the period give an empty weight of 3.9 tonnes and a payload of 7.0 tonnes, nearly twice its own weight, a ratio the French article says has never been matched since. On 14 December 1911 a fire engine built on a Fiat 16 chassis was delivered to the Witkowitz steelworks in today's Czech Republic, with the fire-fighting body made by the R. Czermack works of Teplitz. The truck followed the layout of the first Fiat truck, the 24 HP, with the driving position placed ahead of the front wheels. No example survives today.