The 600—as my dad referred to it, ‘six hundred nat’; when he spoke to other people about the car he drove. In my family, we called her- our baby fiat- ‘gududu.’
Gududu, as my two year old brother referred to the sound it makes as the engine roars through the busted muffler –actually its more like gududududu. Thus, “be’Gududu neuw yemiN’hedew.” It got so popular that my cousin’s family named their green baby Fiat Gududu too! But I always thought that ours was much louder and more feminine since it was in between orange and yellow. No need for baby fiat to me masculine.
When I was in Ethiopia there was a lot Fiats- I suppose they were cheap! Even the Volkswagen Beetle can look down upon it.
Like the Ethiopians, the Argentineans has a KitSil sime for it- fititto, Akin to what my Argentinean college friend told me, it was extremely popular in South America.
I wonder if any still survives, I know the Volksochu are still around, why not the Fiats. I remember once my grandfather pointed out a Trenta-Quatro somewhere in Merkato. He said, “ That car is over 25 yrs old.”
If there is one around, the youngest baby fiat would be 37 yrs old.
Published by March 10th, 2006 in Childhood.Send this post to a friend
hahaha. this reminds me of the Citroen my father bought(beCHereta) from the minilik palace in the late 1970’s. he bought it for my bro, who used it go to work and take me to school at the same time. it was one of the oldest models and it had the loudest engine in town, people gave it the name “DoQdoQe”. funny enough, the people who lived in our “sefer” used it as an alarm clock, as my bro was used to leave home so early in the morning. sadly, after having to go thru so much maintainance our citroen had to be abandoned and eventually sold to a “baleGarage” who was known for collecting old model ciroens. anyways, lol, i came from a family that liked collecting old “yetebelashe’” stuff.
dogdoqo!!
citroen, how could i forget the citroens, that car is the orginal gangster, its hydrolics before snoop dogg days!…..it raises up before once the engin starts and raises down after….
I beleive that there are a few fiats left in ethiopia
Msefin
Citroen , weye Bibi (that is the name we give to our citroen),
lasta you were lucky to abandoned yours in time. In my case all my childhood embaresments are related with BiBi.
I can not count how many ’serges ‘ we missed because of her. I always snike out when ever my friends talk about cars.
But i still love her and miss the noise (ende talian goremesa ketema mulu sew eyezore beyayenem qelu).
wow!… me and my brother use to call our car BiBiye! too it was old Opel my dad purchased long before I was born. It was beaten up and had home made (custom) window string to pull up the driver side window manually and tie it up with handel bar on the door… passenger side it always been sealed ever since I remember…. for a long time a fuel pump never worked so we used a technic called “siphon gravity” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon by supplying gas to the carburetor from a ‘jerican’ hanged on rear view mirror using a plastic tube, my dad is supper creative he have solution for every problem BiBiye had……. I missed BiBye
woy gud yemasema neger yelem, u guys hanged a jerican!! luaghing out loud.. indeed your dad must be creative.
My mom used to drive a Baby Fiat when we lived in Addis. Then it stopped working It was just parked in our front yard for a long time. I remember my little sister and I cleaning the car and playing inside for ours it became our make belief world.
Wow! that was a long time ago. How time flys ppl!