Lapo Elkann's four-seat Fiat Topolino is two seats over the legal limit
Elkann and Giugiaro reworked Fiat's cheapest car, and the clever one cannot be registered
Fabrizio Giugiaro and Lapo Elkann pulled the covers off two Fiat Topolinos on the GFG Style stand at the Salone Auto Torino on 11 September. Top. L is a roofless two-seat speedster. Top. J fits four people, back to back, into a vehicle 2.54 metres long. The mechanicals are untouched, and that matters, because the Topolino is a light quadricycle and European law gives that class exactly two seats.
Top. L is a roofless two-seat Topolino in matte aquamarine
Top. L is the open one: a strict two-seater with no roof, a small speedster in the spirit, its makers say, of the Porsche 550 James Dean called Little Bastard. The cabin is trimmed in aquamarine leather with Alcantara inserts and the body wears the same colour in a matte finish. Giugiaro says the idea was to see how far emotion could push a small, simple, accessible car. The answer stops at the paint and the upholstery: motor, battery and chassis are those of a standard Topolino.
Top. J seats four back-to-back in a 2.54 m Fiat painted like Gianni Agnelli's Ferrari 166 MM
Top. J turns the two-seat quadricycle into a four-seater through targeted changes at the rear, with the second row facing backwards and no fixed roof at all, only a fabric cover against sun and rain. The blue and green livery copies the 1950s Ferrari 166 MM that belonged to Gianni Agnelli, Elkann's grandfather, and nods to Umberto Agnelli, who had his own cars detailed in the same two colours. Elkann says the names stand for Love and Joy, and that the two cars share one spirit: free, irreverent, authentic.
EU rules give an L6e quadricycle two seats, and four seats means L7e and a car licence
Regulation 168/2013 is the reason a Topolino costs €9,990 and can be driven at 14 in France and Italy on an AM moped licence. A light quadricycle in class L6e is capped at 45 km/h and 8 hp, weighs no more than 425 kg without its battery, and may have at most two seats, driver included. Four seats belong to the L7e-CP heavy quadricycle class, which allows 20 hp, 90 km/h and 450 kg but requires a B1 or full B licence depending on the country. Top. J keeps the standard drivetrain, so it is a design study that cannot be registered as the vehicle it is built on, and it comes from GFG Style, not from Fiat.
Lapo Elkann last signed a car at Garage Italia, which he left in October 2021
These are the first cars to carry Lapo Elkann's name since he walked out of Garage Italia. He sold a 30% stake in the Milan customising house to the Swiss holding Youngtimers in July 2021, with an option on the rest, and resigned as honorary president that October, saying only that he disagreed with the new partners. The blue-and-green Agnelli livery was a Garage Italia signature, and Top. J is Elkann taking it back. His partner this time is Fabrizio Giugiaro, who founded GFG Style with his father Giorgetto in 2015 after Italdesign passed to Audi.
A €9,990 Topolino with 8 hp holds 20% of Europe's quadricycle market
The base car is the most modest thing Fiat sells: 2.54 metres long, an 8 hp motor, a 5.4 kWh battery good for about 75 km, 45 km/h flat out, built in Kenitra, Morocco, alongside the Citroën Ami. It costs €9,990 in Belgium and €9,890 in Italy, where scrappage incentives pushed it under €6,000 this spring. It was Europe's best-selling quadricycle in 2025 with a 20% share of the segment, and Fiat has already learned that dressing it up sells, with the Sport, Corallo and Vilebrequin editions arriving this year.
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Top. J is the better idea and the worse car, and both facts come from the same rule. A four-seat Topolino is the joke that makes a motor show worth walking, and it lands on a legal wall: the two-seat cap is not a Fiat choice, it is the L6e class, and the class is the only reason a Topolino can cost €9,990 and be driven at fourteen. Add two seats and you have a heavy quadricycle for licensed adults, at which point a used Panda beats it on every measure. Elkann and Giugiaro chose the Topolino because it is cheap. They have built the one version of it that would not be.
Top. L is the one with a future. An open two-seat Topolino changes nothing in the type approval, and Fiat has turned three cosmetic editions into showroom cars this year alone. If a roofless Topolino is not in the Fiat configurator by the time the Turin show returns in September 2027, this was an exhibition. If it is, Elkann's comeback will have started with the cheapest car he has ever touched.
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