Urban I understand but is extra urban?
2015 Fiat 500 fashionista, complete with facelift
It’s all about the engines. Fiat has added new Euro 6 compliant engines to its line-up and this is the excuse the company has employed to call the facelifted 500 “new”. It gets a bit of a nip and tuck in the form of a nose job. Lights slanted back a bit and LED running lights. Mani beam is still halogen or optionally Xenon, …
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Monday 20th July 2015 05:47 GMT Anonymous IV
Units
> It would have been nice if the speed was in km/h and fuel consumption in litres per 100km, as the normal world is used to.
Can anyone explain why the unit "litres per 100 km" was chosen, rather than the far more logical "kilometres per litre"? There's at least the analogy with "kilometres per hour".
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Saturday 18th July 2015 21:09 GMT Oldfogey
Leagues per hour?
This is a UK website. We use MPH, and, despite the pumps being in litres, everybody thinks in MPG. Get used to it.
And who wants a built in satnav? The software probably won't be to your taste, the updates will cost a fortune, and what happens when it dies? Give me a free standing unit.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 07:40 GMT 45RPM
Re: Stealth Mode
Agreed - anything which breaks up the outline of the vehicle, be it a traditional camo pattern or a funky dazzle look, has to be a bad idea. Unfortunately, the law is unlikely to recognise the defence of "(s)he was driving a damn stupid car, which was very hard for me to see."
Perhaps I'm old and cantankerous, but I cannot see the point of these infantile and toy-like (in presentation, rather than size) cars. If you want a toy, fine. Buy a toy. But remember that a car is a ton+ of rapid injury or death in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands are definitely those of someone who buys a bijou playroom for use on the Queens highway.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 20:16 GMT tfewster
@45RPM Re: bijou playroom for use on the Queens highway.
I've come to loath Fiat 500s. Almost invariably doing 65 MPH in lane 3 of the motorway, with half a mile of clear road ahead of them and an empty middle lane. And when the middle lane ISN'T empty - their "overtaking" speed drops to 61 MPH
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Sunday 19th July 2015 00:45 GMT John of Warndon
The Apple Car?
A ridiculous statement? I think not. The current iteration of the Fiat 500 appeared at a similar time to the iPhone. Both were highly praised for their sense of style and sheer coolness. Neither were (or are) earth shattering with regard to technology. Both have sold in big numbers.
There are further parallels. In the late 1990's, both Fiat and Apple were on the edge of an abyss. Fiat's cars were lacklustre, anecdotally unreliable and the epitome of cheaply produced and sold vehicles. Fiat, like Apple, was on the verge of bankruptcy. The iPod and then the iPhone helped turn wayward Apple into a global juggernaut within an startlingly short time. So it was with Fiat. The company famed for producing cheap cars has now become a premium brand courtesy of the 500. A brand that could have been swallowed up in a hostile takeover went on to swallow up Chrysler.
More parallels? Consider how the increasing lardiness of the 500L compares with the iPhone 6 plus. Both the 500L and 6+ were relatively late to market and responses to market pressures created by rivals, with the 500L being marginally less hideous than the horrendous Mini Countryman.
It is a testament to the 500's style that it continues to be cool despite being an ageing model. Fiat is quite correct to avoid major changes. Another iPhone parallel?
Having been one of the first to purchase the 500 when it came out, I had to wait for months to receive the car after ordering it. Another Apple trait? Indeed, it would seem that the only thing missing was a Fiat dealership with a fancy store in Regent Street, so that queues of fanbois and fangirlz could camp out in eager anticipation of its arrival. Let us see if this "new" 500 can emulate the success the world is anticipating of the iPhone 6S.
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Monday 20th July 2015 07:21 GMT Sean Timarco Baggaley
Re: The Apple Car?
"A ridiculous statement?"
Why, yes. Yes it is.
I've lost count of the (original, pre-2003) FIAT Pandas I've seen around here with well over half a million kilometres on the clock, and number plates dating them at well over 20 years old. Truly they are Italy's unsung workhorses. (My own FIAT Punto ESX lasted 17 years before it went to the big motorway in the sky.)
That said, I'm not sure why you think FIAT going for "coolness" is such a big surprise. FIAT Chrysler Automobiles also own Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Ferrari, and Maserati. And they're *Italian*, for f*ck's sake!
As for the iPhone: it pretty much redefined the meaning of the term "smartphone" thanks to its innovations in usability. It's not the physical components alone that make a product great, but the way they are connected to the user through their interfaces. Apparently, only Microsoft have twigged this 'secret', though the more open nature of the Windows platform makes it much harder to execute on this.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 10:13 GMT Phil O'Sophical
the 1.2L 900cc engine, does it still crap itself when it sees a hill and goes of drying back to Turin
If the rental I has a while ago is anything to go by, yes. 2 normal adults, and it wouldn't climb a hill in anything above 2nd gear. Horrible tinny pile of crap. Not even worth buying as a fashion statement, if I were given one I'd sell it.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 19:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
"If the rental I has a while ago is anything to go by, yes. 2 normal adults, and it wouldn't climb a hill in anything above 2nd gear."
Seconded. I haven't driven a 500 but we did have a Panda hire car with the same engine in Sardinia - a rather moutainous island. The piss poor performance in the hills would have been funny if it hadn't been so damn irritating. At one point on a particularly steep incline I had to change down to 1st! No one who enjoys driving would buy one of these gutless POS unless they had no other choice.
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Monday 20th July 2015 07:28 GMT Putters
Sorry, you were driving it wrong ! Its a Fiat, so you have to thrash the nuts off it, then thrash it again as a rental. Our little sojourn in Sardinia was a few weeks ago with a 1.2 Panda. Absolute hoot. First gear is a driving gear, not a getting started gear, and that rev counter red lines a 6,300. Especially up that funny little roundabout in Abbiadori. We christened it Timmi after the well behaved but hyperactive kid staying at our hotel.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 19:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: FUGLY
"The Multiplayer - eminently practical, good value for money and OK to drive - shame you are obsessed with 'look' whatever that is"
There are plenty of other practical, good value cars that don't look like the secret love child of a cardboard box and deformed duck. And the fact that all you seem to care about is value for money and practicality means you probably have about as much interest in cars as you do washing machines, so why are you commenting in this forum?
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Monday 20th July 2015 12:15 GMT Hellcat
Re: FUGLY
Please list the other cars that will comfortably seat 6 adults, or 3 up front with enough space in the boot to fit 3 mountain bikes stood upright - minus the front wheels.
If you have a need for a 'van' but don't want the insurance cost, or to suffer the purchase cost of a T4 transporter, the wide track Multipla is a hoot on backroads, especially the 1.9 diesel which tunes easily to 150bhp, and beyond if you're a bit mad.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 17:04 GMT Shades
Re: Wait, nearly a ton?
"When the original (as you note) was only half that?"
The original was also half its size.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 19:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wait, nearly a ton?
"Seriously? When the original (as you note) was only half that?"
Apart from as someone else mentioned it being half the size, cars from that era were built with all the structural rigidity and crash protection of an egg box and had the performance of a kneecapped tortoise thanks to the comically small engines.
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Sunday 19th July 2015 22:03 GMT Charles Manning
Less than 500kg...
Yup, the old "real" Fiat 500 was a fun, if shitty, car.
In the early 1980s a mate of mine had one that was knackered as hell, but still served as student transport. It had false plates (no parking tickets), needed the radiator filled every 10km or so, no starter motor.
It was the only vehicle I have ever push started up hill.
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Monday 20th July 2015 07:51 GMT Sean Timarco Baggaley
FIAT's Unusual Engines.
The reason FIAT offer such small engines is because the ancillary costs of owning a car in Italy force them to do so.
The 500 isn't being sold to older, experienced, drivers, but to younger drivers who are still working their way up the no-claims ladder. (It has no less than 14 rungs in Italy, not the five you get in the UK, although the way insurance works over here makes it difficult to compare like for like. As with most of continental Europe, in Italy, it's the car that's insured, not the driver.)
Furthermore, even selling a car on costs money: changing the owner of a car requires a fee that can easily be north of €450, depending on the rated power of the engine (in kW). Other taxes also add to the high cost of car ownership, so those tiny engines are a perfect market solution: few people are driving their shiny new 500s on long trips through the mountains, but they do drive them around their cities. Think of the 500 as the 4-wheeled equivalent of the 1960s classic Vespa motor scooter, and the marketing makes a lot more sense.
Finally, there's the small matter of fuel: Petrol is pricey here, so the less of it you need, the better.
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Monday 20th July 2015 16:15 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: units
litres per 100 km
All cars these days are sold with fuel consumption statistics in litres per 100 km and miles per gallon. Most newish cars will display their fuel consumption in either unit.
Unfortunately, we measure distance in miles but we buy fuel in litres, so calculating the cost of a journey requires knowledge of the conversion factor* and a little bit of unnecessary mental arithmetic. What we really need is miles per litre.
*For some reason, probably laziness, I never know the litres/gallons conversion, but I can always remember gallons (of water) to pounds, pounds to kilos (approx) and, of course, kilos (of water) to litres. This isn't a good calculation to be doing in traffic, and I suspect my results are too approximate to be useful anyway.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
