Renault Twingo more than inspired by the Fiat 500
According to Lapo Elkann – a very outspoken Italian businessman – the new Renault Twingo is more than inspired by the Fiat 500.
Mister Lapo Elkann worked as the marketing manager of Fiat and is brother of current Fiat chaiman John Elkann and he recently commented on a Renault Facebook post saying telling the French company to stop cheating and posting images of the Fiat 500 and a rendering of a new-generation Twingo.
The new-generation Fiat 500 was designed by Roberto Giolito and has been mostly unchanged since the 2007 launching – a solid seven years before the unveiling of Laurens van den Acker’s all-new Renault Twingo, which happened earlier this month in Geneva.
There are some common features between the two, like circular headlights and foglights as well as a U-shaped lower front intake. As far as the Twingo is concerned it features the brand’s signature front grille and five doors, besides a rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout. Maybe this is what Elkann was refering to because the original and iconic 500 had its engines situated in the back.
Elkann’s comment garnered a decent number of likes and agreement from followers but since this is the Internet there were enough who criticised his claim as being hypocritical, claiming – rather correctly – that Fiat’s neo-retro city car copied Volkswagen’s New Beetle and the new Mini Cooper that launched some year earlier around the turn of the century.
It is yet unknown if this comment was made with all seriousness or if it’s some sort of guerilla marketing strategy or if the guy – who is not employed by Fiat any longer – simply wanted to attract some attention while slamming a competitor’s efforts.
We’ll watch the situation and see if anything happens, althought we think that Renault shouldn’t really answer since you can’t really prove a negative and when it comes to style, art and design at least some people will be subjective.
