Playing with FIRE: A History of Fiat’s Robotised Engine

Embarrassing admission first. When I was growing up in the late 1980s, my dad (Bill, who can still be found answering italicar’s phone most days) would bring home some new Fiat from the dealership he managed, and my mind boggled whenever he said it had a ‘fire engine’ under the bonnet. My understanding of mechanics was largely cartoon-based at the time (still is, many would say), and I simply couldn’t fathom how the big red engines that propelled Fireman Sam around had been squeezed into the Fiat Uno I was sitting in.

Plenty of engines have outsold the FIRE’s 23 million (Chevrolet’s small-block V8 passed 100 million, and Volkswagen’s air-cooled flat-four is thought to be nearer 30 million), but for a certain generation in Europe, I think this plucky little engine introduced more of us to the pleasures of motoring than any other. It was never built to win races or break records. It was built to take millions of us to school, out to the shops and on long, boring road trips to the holiday campsite. When I think of memories in cars over the years, behind the wheel or in the passenger seat, the FIRE is the driving force behind so many of mine.

And there’s an irony at the heart of its story. Fiat developed the FIRE so that robots could do the work of costly, demanding, emotional humans. Yet it was the humans who drove it, in the Unos, Pandas, Puntos and Cinquecentos we still work on regularly at italicar, who made it a success. So let’s explore its history and measure the enormous impact it had.

You’re Fired

As we sit here in the second quarter of the 21st century, with our AI agents churning out more slop than we could ever have dreamt of, it’s hard to imagine how rapid automation and computerisation must have felt in the early 1980s. Computers had once demanded entire floors of an office building and a team of boffins to switch on and control. Then, in 1981, IBM launched the PC, a machine that could sit on a desk and take on all manner of menial tasks, transforming the career landscape. People genuinely worried about the robots taking their jobs (typing, filing and payroll were suddenly under threat), but the bosses at Fiat took a more optimistic view.

Fiat had already created a subsidiary concern, Comau S.p.A., to capitalise on this new age of post-Fordist automation. In 1978, the new Ritmo (or Strada, to us Brits) became the first product of Comau’s futuristic ‘Robogate’ system, and gave us the memorable advertising slogan ‘Handbuilt by Robots’. Robogate essentially automated the spot-welding of a car’s monocoque bodyshell, meaning a complete Ritmo bodyshell could be produced in 32 seconds, compared with over six minutes of manual labour for a 126. No holiday to pay, no sick leave, no strikes. Fiat loved it.

But, if robots could produce a car’s bodyshell, why couldn’t they knock out the engine too?

Fighting Fire with FIRE

The answer is; they could. They just needed some very clever people to tell them how to do it first.

The first of those clever people was Stefano Iacoponi, an engineer who started his career at Ferrari where he had worked on expanding Mauro Forghieri’s 1.5-litre flat-12 into the 2.0-litre unit used in the 212 E. He then moved to Abarth, where his genius produced the 16-valve heads used on the 124 Abarth Rallye’s Lampredi twin-cams. When Fiat snaffled up Abarth, Iacoponi was shuffled into Fiat’s Technical Department and tasked with delivering a replacement for the tired 100-series pushrod engine found in the 600, 850 and 127. Before he’d even lifted a spanner, he delivered a masterstroke; bringing together a disparate group of people from every department, not just engineers.

For a project whose whole purpose was to have fewer parts, a man who spent his career making everyday objects simple to make and simple to use was exactly the right ally.

In an effort to remove humans from the process, Fiat had accidentally created a pool of unique talent and vision. But even with these brilliant minds working in unison, it wasn’t an easy task. Their meetings had to be held in secret, in the dead of night, in rooms and offices hired from unrelated companies, to avoid the ire of the unions and their fiery protests on Turin’s streets.

The Initial Spark

The FIRE engine was first seen in 1985, in the Autobianchi / Lancia Y10 Fire (the Touring and Turbo models carried over the 1049cc engine from the 127). Soon after that, though, the fire really heated up. A few months later the Uno range adopted the FIRE engine in its new ‘45 Fire’ model, and in 1986 the newly facelifted Panda range brought in a smaller-capacity version (769cc, badged as the ‘750’) as well as using the 999cc in the 1000 models. After this, there was barely a model in Fiat’s range that didn’t have a FIRE engine of some form or another listed on its order sheet.

Spreading Like Wildfire

That’s a huge range of very different cars, spanning different eras and built for entirely different purposes. To bridge this wide gap, the FIRE engine had to evolve rapidly to reflect the changing motoring landscape. It’s a microcosm of the changes in engineering, offering versions with almost every technological advance of the modern era.

Stoking the FIRE

None of this would have been possible without the simplicity Iacoponi’s team had designed in from the start.

Baptism of FIRE

I said at the start that the FIRE was never built for performance. But at a few points in its illustrious history it has picked up some motorsport chops too, and for the same reasons that made it a good family-car engine: it’s cheap, simple and tough.

And the drivers who cut their teeth piloting our little engines around? You may have heard of some of them: Kimi Antonelli, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris or Ollie Bearman?

As we entered the new millennium, an inexpensive, simple and reliable but more readily available and modern engine was sought, and the humble FIRE was deemed the ideal candidate. Twenty-three years later, these often hand-built, prototype-style cars still rely on the handiwork of Iacoponi’s team for their propulsion.

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Why is the FIRE engine so fondly remembered, then?

Yes, the way it was built was innovative. It played a large part in turning Fiat’s fortunes around. Its inherent simplicity made it eminently adaptable, meaning developments could easily be added and refined.

If that’s all it had going for it, though, would it have lasted as long as it did? What about its effect on us, the drivers? While the list of cars it was fitted in is long, and includes some of the best-selling models ever produced, it would have taken an odd child indeed to have had a poster of any of them on their wall growing up. But that is absolutely the point.

The cars powered by the FIRE engine in all its myriad variations were everyday, affordable and simple. I’d wager that most people across Northern Europe have, at some point or another, had a connection to one of these cars. Either a parent, a relative, a friend or yourself had one, right?

And isn’t it the cars we actually get to experience first-hand that really spread this incurable petrolhead virus, not just the distant, unobtainable exotica? I’ve never sat in an F40, but I can still remember the precise smell of the dash in the Fiat Uno my mum drove us to our caravan every summer holiday in. I have never felt a GT40’s acceleration, but I do remember giggling as my brother chucked his shabby Cinquecento Sporting into a roundabout after he’d picked me up from my GCSE exam.

Which brings up another reason the FIRE engine was such a success. It was, and is, brilliant to drive. Even in the lowly 34bhp guise in the Panda 750, it was responsive, loved to be revved and felt immediately Italian. I think I learnt more about driving in my Mk2 Punto 1.2 8v when I was young (rev-matching and attempting to heel-and-toe on every downshift because I couldn’t afford to lose what little momentum I’d built up) than I ever did in the Lancia Delta HF integrale I owned several years later.

Which is the irony at the heart of this story. Fiat set out to build an engine that needed as few humans as possible to make it, and ended up with one that was loved by more humans than almost any other. Every part Iacoponi’s team left out made it cheaper to build, which made it cheaper to buy, to run, to service and to fix. That simplicity suited the robots, but it suited us even better. For over 30 years, an engine designed to speed up the rise of the machine has been a part of everyday life for normal folk across Northern Europe.

The Embers of the FIRE

And this newcomer had a similar-sounding name, albeit a less confusing one: the FireFly. I think that even as a child I’d have understood that fireflies aren’t literally powering the car.

Will the FireFly go on to be so ubiquitous, powering so many fantastic models and finding its way into so many people’s lives? It’s hard to imagine. If the FIRE taught Fiat anything, it’s that the robots can build an engine, but only the people can make it matter.