Fiat · 1972–2000
Fiat 126
The Fiat 126 (Type 126) is a city car manufactured and marketed by Fiat from 1972 until 2000 over a single generation. It has a rear-engine design and seats four passengers. Introduced by Fiat in October 1972 at the Turin Auto Show, the 126 replaced the Fiat 500, using major elements from its design. A subsequent iteration, marketed as the 126 Bis, used a horizontally oriented, water-cooled engine, and featured a rear hatchback with additional cargo space. The majority of 126s (some 3.3 million) were manufactured in Tychy and Bielsko-Biała plants, Poland and were marketed as the Polski Fiat 126p in many countries. Fiat stopped marketing the 126 in 1993 in favor of its new front-engined Cinquecento. Total production reached approximately 4.7 million units. In Poland, the car became a people's car, and a cultural icon, earning the nickname Maluch, meaning "The Little One" or "Toddler", a name that eventually became official in 1997, when 'Maluch' badges appeared on the rear of the car. In early 2020, the 28-year production run of the Fiat 126 was counted as the twenty-sixth most long-lived single-generation car in history by Autocar magazine.
Text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Generations & variants
Photos
UK vehicles on the road
252 licensed and 790 SORN (1,042 total) at 2025 Q4.
| Year (latest quarter) | Vehicles |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 727 |
| 2015 | 760 |
| 2016 | 822 |
| 2017 | 896 |
| 2018 | 939 |
| 2019 | 955 |
| 2020 | 988 |
| 2021 | 1,015 |
| 2022 | 1,034 |
| 2023 | 1,036 |
| 2024 | 1,026 |
| 2025 | 1,042 |
DfT/DVLA VEH0120 vehicle licensing statistics, source ↗, Open Government Licence v3.0. Small counts are rounded or suppressed at source.
Sources
- Wikidata / Wikipedia profiles — https://models.autoculturesociety.com/cars/Q933646CC0 / CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126CC BY-SA 4.0 · Intro text © Wikipedia contributors; revision 1377695463 · retrieved 2026-10-03
- DfT/DVLA VEH0120 licensing statistics — https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/vehicle-licensing-statistics-data-tablesOpen Government Licence v3.0
- Car Model Index — https://models.autoculturesociety.com/Compiled record. Sources that do not permit reuse are not copied; this index is credited instead.