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This 1971 Fiat Shellette With Basketweave Interior Is The Perfect Luxury Beach Car.

The Petersen Museum has one of the finest automotive collections in the entire world. And they regularly bring us some deep dives into parts of their collection, which is great for those of us who are unable to visit the museum in person.

Hosted by Leslie Kendall, chief historian, on their YouTube channel, the museum is now bringing us a closer look at the 1971 Fiat Shellette, a car Petersen say is absolutely perfect for Monaco.

A Special Survivor:

The Petersen Museum example, however, is from California, and therefore is virtually all original, including the paint. The only datable feature that might not be original are the tires. The idea for a beach car like this came from earlier versions based on Fiat 500s, but the Shellette was the first, true Fiat attempt at a beach car.

There is a nautical theme to the car, with its teak gunnels that not only look good, but being more impervious to water, helps keep the car stronger for longer. The Petersen example was formerly owned by a lady who used it to go shopping in and around Beverley Hills. It was lovingly looked after before she gave it to the museum.

A Wonderful Part Of The Petersen Collection:


Kendall touches on how it took the museum about half-a-second to take the car off the lady’s hands and decide to add it to the museum’s permanent collection. He also mentions why the cars faded out of use, mainly down to impracticality.

You would be paying twice the money for half the car, and you could not use it on long day trips. You would need another car in total. But a firm in Italy, Castagna, has actually reinvented the idea of the beach car by modifying a modern Fiat 500. Maybe the Fiat beach car is about to make a comeback!

An Unusual Basket-Weave Interior:

The first thing Kendall points out to us is the unusual basket-weave interior that the Shellette has. It’s there because it wasn’t an everyday car, but it was actually meant for stylish and wealthy people who wanted to go from their seaside villas, and down to the coast. It is pretty much a beach car.

Theoretically, the seats were impervious to water too! Underneath that unusual interior, is a regular Fiat 850. It therefore has just a tiny, four-cylinder engine in the rear that is around 0.85 of a liter. As you might expect, this is an incredibly rare car, with only 80 Shellettes ever built. And as Kendall explains, many of these cars rusted away due to their harsh lives near the sea.

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