Fiat Ritmo
Stylish and compact, the Fiat Ritmo has a distinctive appearance that epitomises the aesthetics of the late seventies and much of the eighties. Small wonder that it picked up a vast number of fans during its ten-year manufacturing period, which lasted from 1978 to 1988.
A short history of the Fiat Ritmo
Fiat spent a good portion of the 1970s working on a hatchback vehicle, and in 1978 this project gave fruit in the form of the Fiat Ritmo - or, as it was known in certain market, the Fiat Strada. The new car owed a good deal to its predecessor, the Fiat 128 sedan, but with a streamlined production process. In a marketing move that now sounds rather quaint, the car was advertised as being "handbuilt by robots", being one of the first vehicles to make use of mechanised assembly in this way. The Fiat Ritmo went through three distinct waves. In 1982, in an effort to compete with rival vehicles, Fiat redesigned the car and gave birth to a second series. This carried on until, in 1985, the company made a few more tweaks, resulting in a third generation. However, the changes were relatively minor this time - a strong indication that the Fiat Ritmo was already a solid piece of work and did not require a full overhaul, merely the few modifications that are necessary to take advantage of ongoing technology changes. The Fiat Ritmo ceased production in 1988. This was not the end of the story, however. The spirit of the Fiat Ritmo lived on in a subsequent make of car, the Fiat Tipo. In many ways similar to the Ritmo, the Tipo was manufactured until 1995 - but that is a story for another day.