BET 500
Βιοτεχνία Ελληνικών Τρικύκλων (B.E.T.)
Head office:
Athens (GR)
(BET 500: 1973 to the mid-1970s)
Βιοτεχνία Ελληνικών Τρικύκλων (B.E.T., roughly «workshop for Greek three-wheelers») of Athens had been building light three-wheeled commercial vehicles on motorcycle underpinnings since the post-war years. In 1965 its founder Petros Konstantinou presented a first three-wheeled passenger car with a 125 cc BMW motorcycle engine – it remained a single vehicle.
The BET 500
The BET 500 followed in 1973. It took over the rear engine of the Fiat 500 and carried a metal body with room for up to five people. Konstantinou looked for buyers of the production rights abroad; talks with a South African company about exports or moving production came to nothing. Production ended in the mid-1970s.
The layout
Surviving photographs show the layout: a single front wheel in a motorcycle-like fork, two wheels at the rear and behind them the engine, hidden by a panel with cooling louvres. Two vehicles are documented photographically – a beige one and a red one.
Conflicting accounts
The sources disagree: 15 vehicles built are named, elsewhere ten that were actually registered. The end of production is given as 1975 or as 1976. And while the motoring historian Lambros Skartsis writes that the BET 500 was the only truly Greek family car to receive national type approval, Greek motoring websites report the opposite – the missing approval is said to have been the reason for its failure. Most accounts on the internet ultimately go back to the same root: the book «Made in Greece» by Lambros S. Skartsis and Georgios A. Avramidis (Typorama, Patras 2003).