End of Communist Dream Car Production

The last model of Poland's most popular car, the boxy subcompact Fiat 126, rolled off the assembly line on Friday nearly 30 years after the first one was produced, the Polish unit of Italy's Fiat said. The tiny two-door car, affectionately called maluch, or "the little one," by Poles, was during communist times a dream for most families. Now, its bargain price of only ZL 12,000 (USD 2,647) and low maintenance costs attract mainly young buyers. Poland's pre-1989 communist government ordered the production of the car in 1973 after receiving a license from Fiat. Twenty years later the Italian firm bought the nearly bankrupt Bielsko-Biala factory for a symbolic one zloty. Fiat produced more than 3.3 million maluchs, but decided to end production after the auto group's newer designs, especially the subcompact Seicento, started to outsell the 126.