Fiat 500 Jolly Spiaggina e-Icon: ‘You too can sample la dolce vita’

The groovy 60s doorless beach buggy classic has been fitted with an electric motor - and you can hire one

Fiat 500 Jolly Spiaggina e-Icon
Price 285 per day, hertz.com/selezioneitalia
Fuel electric
Range 120km

The tiny Fiat 500 celebrated a big birthday last summer. The little car has now been adding a large helping of four-wheeled jollity to journeys and holidays for more than 60 years. Travel to any Italian city and you'll still see the bug-eyed cuties trundling down cobbled streets, looking like extras from a Fellini movie. The original roofed versions spawned dozens of quirky variations over the years, but one in particular became a bit of a touchstone: the 1962 'Jolly' Spiaggina. It was a doorless beach buggy conversion with a fringed fabric roof that looked like it was made from an old deckchair. The word La Spiaggina is tricky to translate, but means something like 'beach-ette'. Early models were relatively pricey and were bought by the rich and famous (Aristotle Onassis, Yul Brynner) as yacht tenders, golf carts and runabouts.