An ode to the eccentric Fiat 600 – aka the Jolly – by one owner who explains his family’s long-running romance with this characterful car.

Some of my earliest and most cherished childhood memories are of long visits to my grandparents’ summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. Days were sunny, the nights were warm, and the ride of choice was a lacquered, coral-coloured buggy known as “the Jolly”. This heavily modified Fiat 600 had no doors or roof, apart from a white canvas awning festooned with an ornate fringe. We would pull up the front seat, which was made of woven wicker, and pile into the back so that my grandfather could take us to the beach or the local ice-cream store. Invariably, people would point and smile as the Jolly chugged by them with my grandfather sat behind the wheel in his colourful shorts, sockless loafers and Anderson & Sheppard blazer. My younger brother and I would hang our sunburnt faces out of the sides and grip the chrome railings as we enjoyed the wind in our hair.

Apparently this little ritual was not unique to our family, as several hundred others, from Portofino to Palm Beach, had the same idea. The person to thank was Fiat boss Mr Gianni Agnelli, who commissioned his company to produce the Jolly as a fun-time vehicle for his friends. This was a car whose compact frame was prized for its ability to fit atop a yacht and whose roster of owners reads like a jet-set dinner party circa 1960. Mr Agnelli, of course, owned one, as did Mr Aristotle Onassis, Ms Mae West, Mr Yul Brynner and Ms Grace Kelly. Like my grandparents (he was a diplomat, she was a Dow Chemical Co heiress), Jolly drivers were people who were generally driven while in the back seat of a fancy car. And yet the simplicity of the little engine and the purity of design got them out of the back of their Mercedes Grand 600s or Rolls-Royce Silver Clouds and behind the wheel.

The Jolly came into being in the late 1950s when a batch of the popular Fiat 600s were sent off to the Carrozzeria Ghia works for modification. (This was a golden age for the Turin-based body-design firm, whose greatest hits would come to include the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and the Volvo P1800.) Once at Ghia, the Fiat 600s were artfully decapitated, modified, wicker-enhanced and repainted in a palette of candy colours. The Jolly sold for twice the price of a regular 600, with a top optional.

In hindsight the premium was worth it as they currently sell for more than $100,000 when in good shape. The supposed record is $175,000, although a cherry-red Jolly was spruced up for Bono and Sir Jony Ive’s Red auction at Sotheby’s and sold for an incredible $485,000. While the prices seem punchy, they reflect the extreme rarity of the car. By some estimates there are fewer than 100 in existence, although it is hard to be precise.

The Jolly of my boyhood summers had been a 20th-anniversary gift from my grandmother to my grandfather and she had arranged to have “20 Jolly Years” painted on the side before presenting it to him. They had homes in many places but nothing in my mind better represents their union than that little car. With no room for packages or bags, no seatbelts, no doors and little horsepower, it was designed only to ferry people who were in no particular hurry to no particular place. And it did it so well. It could be parked anywhere and did not really require roads.

When my grandmother drove, she would plot the most efficient course across her lawns, ignoring the gravel drives, and leave a small trail of tyre markings – a jet stream of green to be addressed later by the gardener who cared for her 12-acre estate known as Beaulieu. To all of us, summer had not begun until the car had been uncovered and someone had executed the first pull of the little metal lever to the right of the gearshift to ignite the tiny engine and shake off nine months of slumber. There would be a few groans and chokes and sputters, and then the chug-chug sound of a running engine.

In my family there is now a thread of Fiat Jollies running through the generations (my grandmother still drives hers). My late father drove a white one around Napa Valley, and almost 10 years ago – the day before my wedding – I finally received my own.

My father always had impeccable taste and looked as if he had stepped out of a photograph by Mr Slim Aarons when he met my fiancée Alexis and me at his weekend house in the Oakville section of Napa. Together we all walked past the guest house to his pool. Sitting on the far lawn was a little red Jolly with a giant bow on it. A wedding gift. After years of driving my grandparents’ Jolly, I knew exactly what to do, so I turned the tiny key, pushed in the clutch, applied the choke and pulled up the little metal lever. It started instantly and we all piled in to traverse his lawns.

While I drove the short bit of highway home that day, I realised that this is a car for driving to places where other cars can’t take you: over lawns, along docks and across fields. It is not a car for transportation, nor does one drive it alone. There are always passengers, and possibly a picnic basket or beach bag, too.

My grandfather and my father are now gone, but almost every weekend I drive our little Jolly through the vineyards of our own weekend house in Napa Valley. Through the car’s tiny, impractical rear-view mirror I steal an occasional glance at the grins of my own children, Johnny (aged eight) and Delphina (aged six). I see their sunburnt faces hanging out of the sides as they enjoy the wind in their hair, much as my brother and I did 40 years ago. And I drive to no particular place, in no particular hurry.