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There are tuners and there are tuners with some taking the easy way out going for a quick fix while others take up the challenge to create something truly unique. Italy’s Lucarelli-Monza belongs to the second category of tuners. The Monza-based tuning house has revealed details on its newest creation called the 500 Abarth Motore Centrale R230.

As its name implies, the heavily modified Italian hatchback gains a new layout with a mid-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive. Of course, such a radical change is not an easy task with the company having to re-engineer the entire vehicle.

Among other changes, the rear seats of the production model were dropped to create space for the engine while there’s also a new rear suspension set-up and a high-performance braking system with 335mm front- and 305mm rear- discs coupled with four-piston calipers.

At this week's AutoRAI show in the Netherlands, sponsor Shell partnered with stuntman Steve Truglia to put on a very Hot Wheels performance. Truglia drove a Fiat 500 through a 22-piece loop that stands 11 meters tall and made it look easy. See for yourself in the video after the jump.

According to the Dutch press release, the 500 was gutted and modified with a roll cage, new fuel tank, and an integrated limiter to ensure the right speed. Check out the stunt and interviews in the video below.

The story of the Mefistofele started in 1908, when Fiat introduced the SB4 chain-driven Grand Prix racer. After seeing it race, Sir Ernest Eldridge from Britain bought the car with the aim of turning it into speed record breaker.

However, there was one problem: the original car's 18.0-liter engine was considered rather small by Eldridge, who decided to replace it with a massive airplane powerplant (you can read a similar story here). He opted for a liquid-cooled Fiat-built 21.7-liter inline six-cylinder unit (type A-12 Bis) that developed 320 horsepower at 1,800 rpm after various upgrades such as the fitting of four valves and four spark plugs on each cylinder.

The story goes that in order to accommodate the long and heavy engine, Eldridge lengthened the SB4's chassis using parts from a London bus. The car was chain-driven and had brakes only at the rear, which made it a handful for even the most experienced of drivers. Interestingly, experts fail to understand even today the mechanism that allowed the car to reverse, since there is no trace of it left.

Ah, the ‘70s. We had the Oil Crisis and Watergate, microwave ovens and VCRs, Maggie Thatcher and Jimmy Carter. As for cars, well: there were the greats like the Lamborghini Countach, Datsun 240Z and the Dodge Charger. Then there were the not-so-greats like the AMC Pacer, Chevy Chevette and the Ford Mustang Cobra II.

It was the decade that brought us The French Connection, Gone in 60 Seconds and Smokey and the Bandit. It also brought us a relatively unknown (well, to my –ahem- clearly sophisticated tastes) French film called Le Casse (The Burglars).

Oh sure, Bullitt had Steve McQueen in a Mustang and Goldfinger had Sean Connery in a DB5, but you ain’t ever seen a film so brazen to put Omar Sharif behind the wheel of...an Opel Rekord. Well, he is the villain. Surely our hero, Jean-Paul Belmondo, will get to drive something a bit smarter.

During the U.S. presentation of the new 2012 Fiat 500, the Italian company's Chief Engineer Fabio Dimuro explained to journalists the main differences and changes compared to the European specification model. These include - but are not limited to- exterior and interior improvements, the introduction of a more appropriate for American consumers Aisin 6-speed automatic transmission, additional insulation that helped reduce powertrain noise levels from 76 db to 71 db, the addition of MultiAir intake system to the 1.4-liter engine, while Fiat and Chrysler also worked together to redesign the car's rear-axle. Hop over the jump to watch the video. Read more »

Fiat has released the first U.S. commercial featuring it's 500 super-mini urging buyers to "live their life with passion". Priced at $15,500, which should certainly test your passion tolerance, the 500 will be available at 130 dealerships across the country with a 101 hp 1.4-liter MultiAir four-cylinder engine. Check out the video after the break to see if you can resist Fiat's Jedi-like mind-control techniques.

Here's a car race with a difference: an automotive remake of the classic Tortoise and the Hare story, starring a Fiat 500 as the tortoise and a Koenigsegg CCX as the hare. Well, not a real 500 and CCX; these are 1:24 scale models, and the whole thing is filmed in stop motion. It was made by Swedish filmmaker and photographer Robin Danehav as an advertisement for Binero, a Swedish webhosting service.