Paris is home to its fair share of horror stories, from the Phantom of the Opera and the cursed Paris Catacombs to the Rue des Chantres, a famously haunted alley in the city that houses the chilling legend of quarantined children who tragically drowned in the great Parisian flood of 1910.

These horror stories, however, are not comparable to the supposed announcement of Fiat’s Multiplay concept car. If you’ve read any article I’ve written about the Fiat Multipla, you can probably gauge my fear over this statement.

Fiat has decided to resurrect its 70-year-old geriatric car, the Multipla, this time with a twist. The Multiplay, we’ve been told, draws inspiration from the Multipla, stitching an SUV and an open-load-space pick-up together using an “ingenious mechanism” that switches the car between the two in “just a few movements”.

Anyone who has ever owned a convertible, fold-flat seat or fiddly tailgate knows that “a few movements” always ends up as a wrestling match. Fiat, however, argues that the intention behind its new concept is to respond to modern life, where family, leisure, work and adventure are all blurring together. The same could be said about the contents of a skip, and I wouldn’t want to get into one of those either.

Fiat is keen to torture us with the Multipla’s history. In the 1950s the 600 Multipla was born and the entire world became more grey. It fit six people into 3.5 metres, giving everyone, with or without claustrophobia, chills. Then in 1998 the second chapter began, in which six seats were squeezed into under four metres and the world was introduced to a face that looked more terrifying than Thomas the Tank Engine’s after walking through a glass door.

For some unknown reason, Fiat remembers the car fondly, even after causing countless members of the public to blind themselves to avoid having to look at one. It describes the car as having “challenged conventions”, when it should only be described as visually challenged.

Fiat says the Multiplay will inspire future products to complete its “affordable family transportation range”. This strikes even more fear into my heart, with the idea that the Multipla is inspiring the next generation of affordable family cars.

The Multiplay is set to be joined in Paris by the Fiat Grizzly and Grizzly Fastback, which are making their official debut. Let’s hope they look nothing like the Multipla.

The only hope I’m currently holding onto is that there is no confirmation the Multiplay will be built, as it’s only a concept car, so I still have my fingers crossed.

Either way, I’ll be having nightmares tonight at the thought of more Multiplas making their way onto the road.

“FIAT badge on a car” by Ivan Radic is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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automotive, boland, cars, dan, dan boland, family transport, fiat, grizzly, grizzly fastback, hate, hatred, horror, motor show, multipla, multiplay, news, nightmare, paris, paris motor show, pick-up, seats, six, suv, technology, travel