WHAT A LITTLE SWEETHEART! PART 1

“CHE PICCOLA DOLCEZZA!,” GOOGLE TRANSLATE offered, eventually. And Richard Heseltine’s writeup of the “Fiat 508S Balilla Corsa,” Classic & Sports Car, October 16, 2025, certainly fits this description. What’s more, I encountered intrigue and Italiano/English fun fooling with translations. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow,  are tidbits about translations (and about the car as well).

A photo of the Balilla Corsa confirms it: The car is a little sweetheart. This and following images are by Max Edlestone from Richard Heseltine’s C&SC article.

Sweetheart. Google Translate’s initial choice for “sweetheart” is tesoro. But reversing the process with tesoro gives the English word “treasure.” A perfectly good endearment, but not the “sweet” connotation I’m seeking. Another choice is moroso/morosa. Back to English, Google Translate offers “delinquent”/“girlfriend.” And why does this remind me of junior high school? 

Yet another choice, dolcezzo/dolcezza, is literally “sweetness.” And also “gentleness,” “softness,” and “honey.” It’s my choice for this sweetheart of a roadster: dolcezza chosen to match the feminine macchina and vettura.

I also sense that Google Translate may not be into Italian nuances. Readers more articulate in the language are encouraged to sharpen today’s title. Me? I kinda liked the moroso/morosa connotation, except for the English sound link to “morose.” (I suspect they all evolved from the Latin, morosus, literally “capricious.”) 

Ain’t word origin fun? And, yes, we’ll eventually get to the Fiat 508S Balilla Corsa.

Corsa. I expected this would be a cognate of the English word “course,” but Google Translate says corsa is Italian for “race.” By contrast, corso is the “course” cognate.

The Corsa moniker sets this Balilla apart as a racing model.

Balilla. This opens up a can of etymological/historical worms. Wikipedia recounts, “Many believe that the ‘Balilla’ name was connected with Italian Fascism, but Fiat later insisted that the car was named after the 1746 Genoa boy-hero, not the fascist youth organisation Opera Nazionale Balilla. 

Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) was an Italian Fascist youth organization functioning between 1926 and 1937, when it was absorbed into the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), a youth section of the National Fascist Party. Image by Ericmetro and caption from Wikipedia.

Italy’s William Tell, Sorta. “The provenance of the name” Wikipedia notes, “was actually far older than the Italian Fascist movement. ‘Balilla’ was the dialect-nickname of a Genovese boy called Giovanni Battista Perasso, who back in 1746 threw a stone—according to one report several stones—at an Austrian officer in protest over the Austrian military occupation. The action triggered a Genoese revolt against the Austrians and for this Balilla was celebrated as a local hero in Northern Italy through the intervening two centuries.”

The 1934 Coppa d’Oro del Littorio. Heseltine describes, “While Fiat had officially withdrawn from frontline motor racing in 1927, that didn’t stop the 508S from dominating its class in period. The Corsa is most closely associated with the 1934 Coppa d’Oro del Littori.”

“This madcap endurance event,” Heseltine says, “comprised a 3524-mile route that zigzagged Italy across eight days in late May and early June of that year. Fiat won its class in this, the sole staging of the competition, and the ‘Coppa d’Oro’ tag was applied to the Corsa thereafter.”

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll find the Balilla Corsa punching well above its class. And one of its owner/drivers has quite the career during World War II—plus racing afterward. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025