The automotive market has always been a place where you can find a higher level of creativity than you might expect from some other industries. Too much pollution, there’s a solution, the car goes too slow, there’s a solution, the engine is too large, there’s a solution. In fact, we’ve discussed over many years the different ways the automotive industry continues to find solutions to the challenges we face on the roads in our area even if that means taking away the fun of driving to create safety.
In the 1970s not only were we faced with an oil crisis around the world, but some cities had more traffic than they ever had and the infrastructure of the roads and services couldn’t keep up. Even today, we understand the need to have small vehicles that can easily maneuver around the city streets in order to offer a look and feel that shows we can get around quickly. The problem is the lack of cars that can make this happen and in the 1970s that was the issue as well. This is where the Baldi Frog came to become a car that some chose to drive.
What is the Baldi Frog
Over the history of the Fiat brand, nearly every model has been small and compact for the road, but these vehicles weren’t even small enough to help avoid the troubles of traffic and congestion in Italy. The Baldi company came up with the solution and put a car on the market in 1973 that was the tiny answer to these challenges. Much of what makes up this little car is Fiat components, but it showed off a unique take on driving in such a way that it’s cute and a car that we can admire.
Taking a look around the Frog you see body panels that are made of fiberglass, a roof that is made of canvas, doors with no inner panels, windows that slide back and forth, one gauge in the dashboard, and a bevy of lights that will tell you when something goes wrong, but these lights aren’t labeled. In order to save cost and time, this company left out the labeling and created a small car that weighs in at less than 1,000 pounds to handle the drive on the streets around Italy.
This little car was powered by a 595 cc two-cylinder engine that had a top speed of 60 mph but that was plenty in the 1970s on the streets. This little car was built until 1975 and only 300 were created, but the Frog is a car that answered and handled the challenge of congested traffic on the tiny streets in Italy. Take a look at this video below and learn more about the Frog including the fact that two guys who are both over six feet tall can ride inside this tiny cabin and still survive without using a shoe horn to get them out.
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