Press Release
500 wants you involves the public
Just 500 days to go to the launch of the new 500, the car that will be a symbol of 2007, and for which Fiat has planned an international operation known as "500 wants you". It is a revolutionary project that uses the Internet from where it will extend to other means of communication, with one single goal: to involve the public in planning the evolution of Italy's most popular runabout.
"500 wants you" will start as a huge online laboratory, where users discover the stylistic concept of the new car, express their preferences, propose ideas and contribute, for the first time in motoring history, to its creation, in a combined, active way. The fiat500.com site will be open to the public's contributions and expectations, which will be assessed and possibly used during the actual development of the product.
What is more, the "500 wants you" will evolve into "500ology", the largest online encyclopaedia of stories and pictures dedicated to the 500, written jointly with the public. Visitors will be able to enter the "Configuration Lab" to play around with and model Fiat's concept car, and record their ideas. And there will even be a space dedicated to activities for designers, including a competition organised with Designboom (an independent web magazine for the design world) and an opportunity to create and customise the home page of the site specifically for the web designer community.
But, like many things on the Internet, the "www.fiat500.com" site is a case of work in progress, which will welcome new content, activities and initiatives, according to a plan that envisages several updates during the 500 days that precede the launch of the new car, and which will gradually be introduced over the coming months. In other words, for Fiat, "500 wants you" is an innovative, revolutionary philosophy, employed to conceive a new product, which involves designers, creative people and above all future users in the process directly: "For the first time in the history of our company, and perhaps of the motor industry as a whole, a car will be created with the public and for the public," explained Luca De Meo, Brand & Commercial Manager for Fiat.
