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It has some safety systems like horn, warning lights and brakes

This is very safe car. The crumple zone ends at the engine

Borring are those channels when they travel around the world in todays LandRovers and Jeeps. Imagine travel around the world in THIS in crew with 2 trabants. Czech/Polish/Slovak crew did it.

I will never forget this one time when i was like 7 and in front of McDonald, there it was, small fiat (as we call them in poland) turned into cabrio. It was blue, painted with wall paint. And fifth whell mounted on back like some kimd of jeep. Core memory.

When i was 16 i stole that car from my father at the night,to take my girlfrend for the ride. Good that it's so light, becasue i had to push it from the garage without turning it on, so my father won't wake up. Golden times...

I actually saw them in Poland being driven with 5 people inside. Poles joked that it was the only car blessed by the Pope. BECAUSE IT's IMPOSSIBLE TO SIN IN IT.

Polish guy here, my grandpa used to have one of these, whenever we'd visit poland we'd go on trips in it. such a nostalgic car and such an awesome one at that. I still have that engine sound memorised haha

That "stereo" is actually a "mono", AFAIR... And it is tuned to radio frequencies long abandoned in Poland, as around (mid?)nineties they switched to different frequencies (I believe, higher ones) - so people with expensive tuners in their stereo systems (all of those were "expensive" by "general population standards") had to re-tune them.

In the late 90s I saw one of these with a sticker at the back which read: _When I grow up, I'm becoming a bus._

"No airbags, we die like real men..."~ Fiat 126 Yes Matt, make more videos!

The quietest car in the world, because your knees cover your ears 😃

Other than in Poland, this thing was also licensed and built by Zastava in the former Yugoslavia under the designaton 126 PGL. Which in turn gave birth to the nickname "Peglica" which roughly translated means "little iron" (as in the iron you do your ironing with). It was decently popular here and it was my mother's first car back in the day. And like in Poland, we still smile every time we see it on the road these days, which is extremely rarely.

in the '80s, the most popular SUV, MPV, pickup, and campervan on the Polish market

I'm Polish and I'M living in Chicago USA NOW. My father bought and gave me this car in 1986. I drove my 126 Polski Fiat. all over THE place in Europe. I still vividly remember my solitary trip from Istanbul Turkey to Krakow Poland 3 days...2 nights Through TURKEY...BULGARIA....YOGUSLAVIA..HUNGARY...CZECHOSLOVAKIA ...BACK TO POLAND. JESUS CHRIST ...I MADE IT

my mum had this car from 1979 to 2013, although it was repaired often due to its fragility. i had the chance to do my first drive with it, kinda hard but those cars literally makes you learn how it works, it's like having a kart under your hands

I see a DankPods video where he's bought this car, and now I see this.

And when it breaks down, you can wear as a backpack

The Hungarian joke is about that this is the quietest car on the world, coz' when you sit in, your knees are covering your ears.

This car reminds me of my childhood. When I was a kid, every second car in Poland was this car. It was everywhere!

Jeździłem taką maszyną pamiętam😂😂... to były piękne czasy I ten dźwięk i wrażenia

RWD, Light, air-cooled engine in the back. Basically a Porsche!

No airbag, but a picture of Padre Pio on the dashboard to protect the driver 🔥🔥🔥 Italianity level 100

"Soft touch material" on the dashboard, a.k.a. the airbag

One of my teachers when I was at school had a 126p and I never knew what the "p" meant. Thirty years later I just found out - thanks Mat.

Now it's even rare in Poland and we do smile when we see one on the road :p

Fun fact: due to the sound the engine made it was also called 'Kaszlak' - 'the Cougher' :)

Its an absolute NUGGET!

this is probably gonna mess up my recommendations, but I love how practical and simple this car is. I feel like it'd be a great one to convert to electric.

This car is famous in Poland for being an anomaly in terms of physics - namely bending space. Anyway you try to fill it with luggage, there's always space for some more.

My girlfriend in the 90s had one in Budapest and I remember the brakes were amazing! BTW, there is a trick to DOUBLE the value of your Polski: you fill the tank!

Fun fact: this car was also nicknamed "Kaszlak" (from word Kaszel which means cough", due to the sound it's engine is making. As somebody who grew up in Poland in the 90s I can also say that if you owned one of these you were one of the cool kids hahaha. Thanks for the video I really enjoyed watching it ☺

Im polish and 42 this year, been living in Scotland since 2005 so quite a wee while now:) And what i can tell is you made my eyes wet cos i owned 4 of them back in the 90'. One of them was 1979 then another two from late 80' and my last one was a pure beast after tunning in 1995! :) great film btw :D

All you need now is a sticker that state "no airbags, we die like real man"

It's faster than light, when you drive fast enough the lights are dimming.

thats a beautiful looking nugget right there. make sure to always keep your emergency wood in the front trunk

what a beautiful nugget this is, someone's been in here for sure

As a Pole I certainly wasn't expecting that little thing here

This brings back memories .. me my parents and my 2 sisters and a dog on a 12 hour journey to the seaside .. 😂😂

I got the exact model of this car (I was 20) back in 1979 (Including the color). I drove it in some scary conditions, like fresh deep snow and on long distance trips loaded with people and luggage. One of my favorite “features” was the stretching starter cable. After some time, the only way to start the car was to push the starter from behind with a stick. The fuse box was in the hood trunk and the way to get the ignition on was to put a coin between the first and the second fuse, which made it the easiest car to steal. Thanks for the video. It made my day!

I'm in Poland rn visiting my family, then I saw the 126, my mom said "it's an incredible car, it can hold 11 persons in it !" And alot of other things...

Im Polish and I can confirm that this car was worth twice or often three times as much if you wanted to sell it new. But it wasn't exactly a waiting list, in communistic Poland you could only get "a ticket" from your employer that allowed you to buy one. It was like that with everything. Anyway I remember my dad got ticket for one of those in early 80's, we had old 13 year old one at the time and we went to pick up the new one. Two days later my dad and my uncle drove to sunday market with second hand cars to sell the old one and they managed to sell it for 10% more than we paid for brand new one 3 days earlier. My dad even got offer three times the price for the new one but nobody back then was interested in selling it, who knew how many years would pass before we would be able to buy new one as it wasnt simple 2 year waiting list like i said. Anyway this car doesnt even belong to Polish car history, history basically is this very car. We also had licenced Fiat 125p which was a 4 door sedan, Polonez FSO which was a 4 door fastback and Syrena 102 and 105 but no other car came even close to what Fiat 126p made for Polish history. Literally not one person born in Poland before 1980 that wouldnt own that car at some stage, you could repair it with screwdriver and hammer alone, it was extremely cheap and reliable. Even the most recent renewed version from late 90's only costed around 2000 pounds brand new. And in 80-90's this car definitely made over 50% of all cars in Poland.

6:27 adjustable intermittent wipe AND flashing hazards?! I didn't realize this was a luxury car

Imagine the stop and stares people give with a good sound system installed, in Australia. My first manual i learnt to drive in was this very car. It was always a fantastic conversation starter, being a teenager and turning the music up while cruising around town I always got the smile, stop and stare which in turn made me chortle. I will always remember this car with fond memories.

In my years as a young man in Syracuse NY I owned a fiat 134 tc special sedan which was very nice.. and later a fiat strata 2dr hatchback also wonderful. Honestly they were plenty of car for almost no money. Glory days of times gone away. Thanks for this video

Good choice Matt 👌☺️ Best regards from Poland 🇵🇱

I'm polish and gotta tell you: everything you said, mentioned is spot on. Love it. Excellent review of polish Maluch.

My father used to have this car in the 70s... it's the first car I can remember being into, and this video brings back so many memories.... It was just as basic as it looks, basically metal, plastic and some wiring. I remember pushing that odd gummy button to spray some water on the windows , the hardest you pushed, the more water you got !

That was our family car where I grew up in Dominican Republic. I remember working on the car with my Dad. It was in our family for decades. So many memories. Thank you!

My grandparents went to England in fiat 126p 😁 . 1750km from Poland to Nottingham .

Click on the top banner to see how much you can save on a new 1982 fiat 126 lolol

I think that this type of video like so much because in many people they bring back memories of the past :)And cars every type ,luxury or not, have some effect.

Oh my goodness! THANK YOU for bringing this old little one back to life in 2024 and getting her known in the cyber universe! I was SO MUCH IN LOVE with this car when I was a little kid!!!! This brings memories!!!

My grand-mother offered me, for my 20th birthday, a second-hand, "swimming-pool blue" Fiat 126. I owned it from 1978 through 1982... and loved it! I wish to share an experience I had with it. I was then a member of my university's ski racing team, over here in Switzerland. One beautiful day, following a snow storm which had deposited over a foot of snow, I went up to the mountains for a training day. The road was snow covered... and I had summer tires, as I could not afford changing to winter tires. I was following another car which, just before a turn in the road, suddenly braked for no reason I could have anticipated. I also breaded, but slid. I was able to successfully avoid rear-ending that car by swerving to the left... Unfortunately, a 3.5 ton delivery truck was just emerging from the turn, and we hit... left-front corner against left-front corner. Imagine, some 500 kg of Italian steel against a loaded Mercedes 3.5 ton truck! My front wheels were blocked by bent steel... but pulling on it with my ski-gloved hands, I was able to free them, and to drive away... but not before the police fined me for loss of control, though. Repairs cost me but a few hundred Swiss francs. But the truck didn't make it, and had to be towed away. My little Fiat 126 had warped the truck's whole cabin so badly that its doors coud not be opened anymore, and the poor driver had to exit through a window. I know from the insurance settlement that the truck incurred over 10'000 Swiss francs of damage... Brave, tough little Fiat 126, which won that fight against 20:1 odds!!!!

Lap it around the Nürburgring! That would be fun to watch 😂😂

OMG we used to have two of those cars when i was a kid. Indeed it was family car back there. So many trips as a 4-people family we did in this little ladybug. My dad could repair it by himself... and in the winter you had to pud some isolation to the engine vents othervise you could forget about starting this car. It was tough times back then... but believe me or not it was awesome stuff for us. I still love sound of this car, it reminds me of the childhood. Good piece of video you made here man! Good luck with this car! :D

We had a 126 and loved it. So easy to use, service & repair.

Engine in the back, RWD and straight cut gears? Race car confirmed.

In Poland we always call those cars "Maluch". It means "Small One" or "Kiddo". You can still see them on the streets quite often. Maluch is really near and dear to our hearts :)

From Hungary. In the early 90's, my family's first car was one of these in orange. My little brother and me were kids back then. My father is a very tall man and I remember he bumped his head into the top every time we drove through a road bump. It was so comic We made big holiday trips with it, suitcase strapped to the top, bags around our legs and in your lap too. But the thing I remember most fondly is the moment when he proudly showed us his car. Our car. Me and my brother couldn't believe it our family finally got one. We were in awe. I remember it's licence plate number even today.

The memories, awesome xD. Thanks for making a video about this little gem :D

it does a 0 - 100 quite fast, if you're falling off a cliff.

"You do want the stereo to work" Ahem... the Mono!

I'm Polish guy living in Germany. Cut the long story short, big respect man. I did my licence with this car, was not so easy because I'm 193cm high. Later on I drove polski fiat 126p with a friend of mine more than a 100km/h in a city. Still have goose bombs thinking of it. Take care.

I spent so much of my childhood in the passenger seat of my grandad's Fiat 126 "maluch".! It was an absolute deathtrap, but I loved the little pop out windows it had. The footwell had a rust hole in it so you could see the road as you drove along. Good memories lol

4:00 back in the 80's in Poland you would have't got enough time to smoke a cigarette, this is how fast someone would stop to help you.

I was 5 and my mother had one of those, one day we were on the GRA (Rome highway) at almost 150 km/h and overtook a 355 GTS that was cruising in the right lane, cheering like we won the world championship. Half a km later we had to stop at a service area for overheating, water from the radiator cap was sprinkling like a fountain. 355 owner stopped for refuel and paid us a coffee. I recognize that moment as my petrolhead initiation.

This car is just adorable..! I wanna own this little thing SO bad, especially since I live in a suburban area where this is still pretty useful. Would be great to just use it and travel down to the mall with or whatever.

We had one of these and a Morris at the farm where I used to live, we (the kids) used them to have fun on some old dirt roads no one else used, I was 10 when I tried one of these beasts for the first time, vividly remember the excitement.

I've been living in Poland for the last 10 years, and I've never seen a non-Polish review of a Maluch so nice, natural, and honest about it. Regards from Poland, I'm Colombian btw and getting Polish citizenship soon :) :) :)

Sign up for it, then wait for years - basically the same purchasing experience you get with a Tesla but in Poland they had that in the 70's already!!!

The way he enthusiastically talks about this tiny car made my day.

Owned one of these. Despite it's size it could go the Budapest-Warsaw length. One of it's key features is, because of it's motor situated at the back it can easily climb mountains (even if the road is icy, which I experienced multiple times with it and all it needs is winter tire).

In Yugoslavia we called it "peglica", which means little iron (for ironing clothes) :-)

I did my driving course in this thing, including the final test. Back in early 1990s this was still virtually the only car used by driving schools in Poland.

the windscreen wiper is by far my favourite thing on this car. i wish modern cars had the option to manually squirt the windscreen. that would be so fun to use

The stereo is the old version, before they started using AM/FM in Poland around 1994.

I grew up in Hungary and used to see Polish families of four plus luggage on top driving 800 miles down to lake balaton in these tiny cars

the engine sound instantly transported me in my childhood. Thanks

Mat, I found this video a bit late, but I'm so glad I did. I love old FIATs and my first car was a 2000 Spider with almost the exact same quirks as your little gem here (the passenger door window winder fell off if you so much as ran over a bug). Thank you for making my day with this video and showing people the joy of old, questionaby built Italian cars.

My main memory of these from my childhood is seeing them ride around town during summer with their hoods open to help cool the engine (which is at the back). Also they are very uncomfortable to get in and out of due to how low the seating is, kind of like a MX-5 😄

In Serbia we call it 'Peglica' which translates to 'little iron'

my grandmother drove one of these. from the north of Poland. from elblag, to Sofia in Bulgaria. that was in the 70s or 80s. she said this car was amazing

I remember my whole family would drive in it on weekend trips and that was my mom, dad, sister, uncle, aunty, 2 cousins and me. We always made it in one piece. No problem at all.

My mom had one.Good memories.It could start in the middle of the winter

My father drove from Lublin to Rome in one of those which is almost 2000km one way back in the 80s ;)

Devoid of safety, devoid of comfort , can go through narrow corners , horn is weird, makes so much noise .... How is this car not in India ....

Love this car, i got a video on my recommended of a Fiat 126 rally car in action and i was amazed

My parents had three of them as second car...It was the one I learnt to drive with....Rear traction and super fun doing spinnings!! Unbelievable, I know, but you really can!!

it aint much but its honest work greets from Poland

I'm Hungarian, my friend had one of these in around 2004. It was still commonly used back then, but now all of them have disappeared from the roads. There are only 16 for sale currently in the entire country.

My dad bought this car in the year 1980. We are from Chile and it worked geeat. You could fix it wirh almost anything. A fun fact, once it was a flood in the town and much biger cars were not able to run, but this car had the distributer and air entrance very high so it got by no problem with the water at the middle of the door.

I only experienced a Fiat 126 once as a kid. My friend's Mum had one. We all piled in it one morning for her to take us to school but it wouldn't start, so we walked. I never went in it again but have clear memories of her pulling those levers up and down for 10 minutes to try to start it :)

I grew up in Cuba, our first car was a "Polaquito" little polish like we call them. It was fantastic. Yes they were very sought after. My father earn the right to buy it at work. Yes, that is how the stuff used to be back then. I don't know how it manage but we were able to go up and down mountains with it

i remember entire families arriving in yugoslavia in this car.....with cargo on the roof.....it was insane

Mum had 2 of these when I was a kid here in West wales, one red one blue , fond memories, one had been painted on bonnet

I love the smile when he starts the engine and drive. :)

In Croatia (or better to say ex Yugoslavia) they used to call it "peglica", which is literally translated to "little iron" (as in iron for ironing clothes).

Amazing car. Poles also call it "kaszlak" this roughly can be translated to "cough-er". :D

loved that, it took me back. My first car was a navy one. Bought it in 1990 for £100 loved it and bombed around Kingston when I studied there. I even used to overtake BMWs on the M40 going home. I was fearless, thank the Lord I never came a cropper in it. Mine didn't have the polish logo so must have been from somewhere else.