When the chairman of Fiat wants a new yacht tender, he needs only to turn to his designers and engineers to achieve it. The result of Gianni Agnelli’s desire, offered to the public in limited numbers beginning in 1957, was the “Jolly de Plage,” or Joker of the Beach. Based upon the standard Fiat 500, the Jolly boasted reinforced open bodywork with a jaunty surrey top, wicker seats that would have been at home on one’s patio, and no doors. It was built by Ghia, the noted Italian coachbuilder with whom Fiat enjoyed a long relationship, and so it boasted excellent build quality and an appropriately high price tag, more than double the cost of a standard 500.

For much of the 1960s, the Jolly was the car in which to be seen at European resorts, favored by members of the space age jet set.

The Jolly offered here is an exceptionally rare model based upon the Fiat 600, boasting a 28.5 horsepower, four-cylinder engine, as “hot” as a Jolly ever got, and in its day, it was considered an upscale, premium model. It is believed that fewer than two-hundred 600 Jollies were produced, less than half of which have survived.

This particular car was originally built for the Italian market. It has had only two Florida owners since 1980, with the current caretaker holding it for 20 years. As part of the recent restoration, it was converted to American sealed beam headlights and a speedometer/odometer reading in miles. The odometer was reset to reflect 21,531 miles, the U.S. equivalent of the 34,651 kilometers that were believed actual at the time of restoration. All components of the car are otherwise original and were carefully restored to factory-fresh condition, including the fully rebuilt, matching-numbers, original engine.

The result is a Jolly that is “Riviera-ready” in all respects, and as a bonus, it boasts the most desirable and powerful 600 drivetrain, which is most desired by collectors.