If ever the phrase “Don’t judge a book
by its cover” was appropriate, it’s with the Fiat Multipla. With an exterior described
as “Designed by a group of people who seemingly never met”, and an instrument cluster resembling
“Nightmare on Skull Rock”, this isn’t a car to easily love. But that’s a shame.
Under the comical looks lives a truly great car that’s made a quantum leap in automotive
design like the Beetle, 2CV or Mini. Top Gear summed it up best when they named it Car of
the Year in 2000, and at the same time the Ugliest Car of the Year. Why did the absurd
Multipla morph into the king of bland, and why did its designer have the last laugh?
This is the wacky and crazy Fiat Multipla Story.
(music) The Multipla wasn’t the first Multipla.
In 1956 Fiat took the 600 and made it bigger, allowing it to hold two cramped people in
the front, and up to four in the back. It was a small, but very practical vehicle that
had a long life as a taxi in many parts of Italy. Production ran for 13 years and they
sold almost 130,000 of them. So, when Fiat was looking to make a new practical
vehicle in the 1990s it seemed logical to reuse the well-known Multipla name. The new
car was designed by Roberto Giolito, so you can hang the credit or blame on him, depending
upon who’s side you’re on. He’d been hired into Fiat in 1989, and straight away
started creating designs that pushed the boundaries. The first was the compact three-seater city
car, the Downtown in 1993. He was experimenting not only with different styles, but different
materials and manufacturing techniques. This tiny electric car had a plastic body, with
an aluminium chassis. Giolito was clearly trying to push the boundaries of making striking,
practical cars that would rise above the humdrum econobox cars of the period.
A year later came the Zic prototype. This showed off his penchant to be even more radical,
with high-mounted front lights, and a cutaway rear design foreshadowing the “big bottom”
Renault Megane by eight years. For the Multipla, Giolito wanted a total rethink
of the car. Large and medium-sized MPVs or Multi-Purpose Vehicles were becoming popular
in Europe, and the Fiat design team discussed how they could get large MPV space out of
a more compact package. Full size MPVs were almost 5m or 16½’ long, but the team challenged
themselves to create a practical package in less than 4m or 13’. Cars this short couldn’t
hold more than five seats, but no one had tried making the car higher and wider. If
cars like the Rolls Royce could be wide, why not push the boundaries a little?
With a wider car, the concern was that it would be too wide for tight supermarket parking
spots. But the Multipla was only 15cm or about 6” wider than MPVs like the Renault Megane
Scenic. And it was 17cm or about 7” shorter, with a larger boot.
Using new manufacturing techniques, they could use a space frame design to make a cost effective,
flat floor. This allowed them to place seats and interior features anywhere they wanted.
Six identical seats were used, and each could be folded to turn it into a table or removed
all together. Even with all these seats, there was still a large boot. Take the middle seats
out and you can carry something long. Take five seats out and turn it into a cavernous
single seater van. This practical design had been pioneered by the Renault Espace in the
1980s, but this took the minivan concept to a new level. It’s easy to see why the Multipla
became the favourite of Italian taxi drivers, like the Fiat 600 Multipla before it.
The controls were set in the middle, like the BMW’s new Mini released around the same
time. The controls looked odd but were simple and straightforward, and big storage bins
were available in front of the driver and passenger. On the outside large mirrors, similar
to those you see on trucks, meant there were no blind spots when overtaking, and made parking
a breeze. And the wall of windows around the car with low sills helped with visibility.
The design team thought of every little detail. For example, the door handles had an extra
moulding on the outside to help protect the door when it was opened.
And the design team thought outside the box with the engine choices. Petrol and diesel
options were chosen, but Fiat also offered a model that could be driven on petrol or
LPG or liquid petroleum gas. Cheaper LPG was becoming a popular alternative car fuel around
the Millennium, with fuel stations popping up all over Europe. Fiat also investigated,
but ultimately rejected fitting the Multipla with a hybrid engine, something Toyota were
about to bring into the mainstream with the Prius.
OK, I’ve gone this far without mentioning the elephant in the room. It’s practical
and clever, but those looks! Giolito’s design had function leading form, and he was happy
to have slightly zany design. What’s more surprising is that Fiat’s management were
happy to go along with this bold automotive statement. Giolito had one bubble pod sitting
on top of another, and placed headlights on both pods. This gave good front visibility
and people could clearly see you coming, but you wouldn’t call this car elegant or beautiful,
and this is strange coming from an Italian car designer. It produced a bulging rear “bottom”
that looked like two Teletubbies were sitting on each other.
But what it wasn’t was bland, and for that it should be applauded. Too many cars then
and now look the same, chasing the same low drag factor and practical design. Sometimes
it can be hard to tell one econobox from another. The Multipla was shown at the Frankfurt International
Motor Show in 1997 to a mixed reception, and in fact Giolito and five others drove to the
Geneva Motor Show that same year in a Multipla to test its practicality. Attendees probably
thought this was just another wacky Fiat concept car like the Downtown and Zic, and I can imagine
reaction when it launched in 1998 was “Oh, you were really going to make that?!?”.
At launch reviewers didn’t know quite what to make of this odd-looking car. They applauded
its practicality and attention to detail, and it felt good on the road with great handling.
Visibility on the Multipla is fantastic and the driver has a high, commanding position.
But you could see why reviewers hedged their bets. Would this car be the shape of things
to come, like other transformative cars like the 2CV or Beetle? Yes, it looked like a jelly
gone wrong, but cars have come along with odd designs that we now take for granted.
For example, the 2003 BMW 5-series came in for terrible criticism for its headlight design,
but now we accept it as normal. Would the Multipla become a design classic? The New
York Museum of Modern Art certainly thought so, exhibiting the car there upon its release.
But in 1999 when Fiat launched the Multipla, first in Italy, then in the rest of Europe,
did you really want this car sitting in your driveway? Some loved its striking design,
some put up with it for its practicality, but many were put off. The car sold well initially
– with 30,000 sold in the first three months, but sales faltered quickly. It seems people
were won over if they took the time to look at it, but first you had to get them to look
at it. It seems Fiat had faith though, as Giolito got a promotion to head designer in
2001. In 2004 the Multipla got a restyle, and the
move away from that odd external look shows Fiat thought its external looks were holding
it back. But they went too far in toning the styling down. As the Daily Telegraph reported
at the time, they were “desperately sad that the new Multipla no longer resembles
a psychotic cartoon duck.” They turned it into the same bland design it was competing
with, at a time when competitors cars had integrated some of the Multipla’s clever
internal design tricks. Suddenly its only big standout feature was the three-abreast
seating, and the Honda FR-V, released the same year, showed that feature wasn’t something
the public was clamouring for. The Multipla got another reworking in 2006
to commemorate the Turin Winter Olympics. The “Sbarro Multipla Multiplan” had three
rows of seats, putting the two extra ones in the boot, and they added a third set of
doors on each side. It showed if nothing else that the car shell was so rigid it could have
a wall of doors on either side of the car. But it wasn’t enough to save the car, and
production ended in 2011. So, what happened to Roberto Giolito? Did
he continue to make strange designs? Well no. His next project, admittedly with a team
of people helping him, was the Fiat 500 in 2007. With this car, Giolito didn’t make
the same mistake. In fact, he went the other way, making sure the top priority of the car
was a beautiful exterior. Only by doing this could you sell customers on the great interior
design, and the 500 wasn’t just a pretty face.
And he also created the Fiat Multipla’s successor in 2012, the Fiat 500L Living. The
500L was a larger version of the 500, and the 500L Living was a stretched version, made
on a new platform. But gone were the Multipla’s strange or bland looks, replaced with the
cute, friendly 500 shape. The 500L Living is a seven-seater, a truly practical car,
but maybe not as cutting edge and practical as the Multipla. But you can still see some
of the Multipla in it, with the same rear bulging “bottom” with smaller window “pod”
on top, just not as pronounced. On the 500L it looks elegant, showing the old-fashioned
Fiat 500 lines. And the public agrees. Sales of the 500L Living
are much higher than the Multipla for the same period in its lifecycle.
But that wasn’t the end of the Multipla. Like the Rover 75, the design was sold to
China in 2007 as knock-down kits. That is the car was partly assembled, then shipped
to China for final assembly. Then when Fiat’s production was winding down in 2010, the tooling
was sold to China and the car manufactured there as the Zotye M300. They even sold an
all-electric variant. But sales were modest and production ended in 2013.
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