La Mia 500 - Fiat 500 with MP3 Downloads and Text Messaging

There are a lot of ways to customize a car. Dave Slocombe and Natasha Sopieva have decided to do it by giving a vintage Fiat 500 a multimedia super high tech soul. To start with, this loveable little car won't open unless you send it a text message (by keying in the registration number on your mobile); it replies to this by flashing its headlights and sending a message of acknowledgement from the owner, with the addition of comments such as:

"Good evening, welcome back! By the way, I'm thirsty, I'm out of fuel..."

Because its interior is quite small, highly advanced micro-technologies can perform miracles on it. Its sun visors have little make-up mirrors on the back of them, with TV cameras to film and/or photograph the crew, while the rear windows are screens on which you can draw or write emails and text messages to be sent in real time. "Through wireless networks and with GPRS connections", says Natasha, "messages, sketches and images are stored on the car's website". But there's more: when hooked up to a fuel pump (this is also in the show) to fill up with petrol, our Fiat 500 can download mp3 files (which can also be stored on the website) from a jukebox inside the pump.

Even when parked, this little Fiat car is still busy. "Just like the writer Philip K. Dick did with his androids, we wondered whether cars also dream of electronic sheep",says Dave, "and so we thought that the 500, while in a resting state, through a device installed between the two headlights, could project its memories to the outside -films and images stored during ist daily trips".

Project by Natasha Sopieva ( Turkmenistan ) and David Slocombe ( United Kingdom ).