Fiat Downtown

The Fiat Downtown is an electric city concept car first shown at the Turin Motor Show in 1993 by Fiat. It was designed by Roberto Giolito, and two examples were made between 1991 and 1993: the first by the coachbuilder Stola and the second by Fiat from the existing moulds. The car has a plastic body on an aluminium chassis, which gives it a very low kerb weight of 700 kilograms. A small electric motor is built into each rear wheel and is fed by sodium-sulphur batteries mounted at the rear, giving a claimed top speed of 100 kilometres per hour or a range of about 300 kilometres when driven at a steady 50 kilometres per hour. The Downtown belongs to the group of small urban electric concepts that Fiat showed in the early 1990s to explore how a compact city car could work with battery power, and it never entered series production.