Fiat 500 (new one) write-up - Toyota Yaris Forums

SailDesign · 07-09-2007, 12:09 PM

From the Daily Telegraph (London):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...t/mffiat07.xml

Cinquecento reborn

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/07/2007

There was a 50th anniversary party in Turin this week. That's the whole of Turin, you understand. The city simply stopped for 24 hours while shops, bars, clubs and cafés remained open for the city's inhabitants as well as the 10,000 visitors and 1,000 journalists who arrived in town for a Fiat bash known in the motor business as "Mesa Cantata".
Fiat Cinquecento

All that drinking and dancing celebrated one little car. Dante Giacosa's new Fiat 500, or Cinquecento Nuova, was first presented to the Italian premier 50 years ago on July 4, 1957. Like Britain's Mini, Germany's Beetle and France's 2CV, the Cinquecento was the Italian "People's Car".

But the celebration must be a uniquely Italian thing, because I don't recall reading about an all-night party in Birmingham to celebrate the original Mini in 1959, or a 24-hour Mardi Gras in Oxford to wassail BMW's new MINI in 2001. Perhaps Italians celebrate their industry more than we Brits do - go on, tell me something I don't know. Anyway, happy birthday, Cinquecento.

Fiat might be almost back in the black these days, but it doesn't just throw massive parties out of teary-eyed nostalgia for a much-loved car that provided most people of a certain age with some sort of amazing adventure - mine involved a blonde, a bottle of Haig whisky, a sunny afternoon on Dartmoor and a pig… (That's enough - Ed)

In fact, Fiat has another nuova Cinquecento to sell. With the possible exception of the first Audi TT, the new 500 is the most successful transmogrification from retro-styled concept car (the Trepiúuno, shown at Geneva in 2004) to production model. Just look at it - from its wide-eyed headlamps to its pert bottom, doesn't it just remind you of whisky and a pig?
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Well anyway, neither J Mays' VW Beetle, Dave Saddington's BMW MINI or Harm Lagaay's Porsche Boxster managed the time-travelling trip into modern production quite as confidently as Roberto Giolito's new Cinquecento. These days, under Sergio Marchione, Fiat is leaner, more focused and ambitious and the Cinquecento proves it. "When I got the job, my mother said, 'Why don't you do the Cinquecento - that's what everyone wants you to do'," says Fiat brand manager Luca de Meo.

Of course, it would be easy to write off the new 500 as a cynical raid on the company's dusty drawing-office plan chest to pillage a retro-wrap for a common-or-garden family hatchback. True, under the new Cinquecento's skin is a Fiat Panda with its ubiquitous MacPherson-strut front, twist-beam rear suspension, but the 500 is also going to be one of the safest cars in its class. Getting four people (just) into an 11ft 7.6in long bodyshell and still getting five Euro NCAP crash-test stars, plus two for pedestrian protection (that's the target, and they're very confident) is some technical feat. More than 65 per cent of the body is made of high-strength nickel and chrome-vanadium alloy steel, which has allowed Fiat's engineers to maximise accommodation with less physical space between passengers and any oncoming impact. It's something like the original Cinquecento, in which your feet were never more than inches from an accident, but much safer.

And yes, of course, the 500 is no longer powered by a clattering little 479cc, parallel-twin beneath the bootlid, but there is some genuine innovation under the bonnet. The smallest 68bhp 1.2-litre petrol engine meets stringent Euro 5 exhaust emissions requirements two years before they are mandated. The 98bhp 1.4-litre FIRE engine is a familiar Panda fitment (there will also be a 133bhp turbo version in next year's Abarth sports model) and the 1.3 Multijet turbodiesel still shows the opposition the way home in terms of torque and economy. What's more, from next year all the cars will be fitted with a stop/go system that turns off the engine after a few seconds' idling, reducing emissions by up to 10 per cent in urban conditions - you just press the throttle to start again.

There is, however, another parallel-twin engine under development - bless! This will be a 900cc turbocharged petrol unit with 90-110bhp, balance shafts for refinement and electromagnetic actuation of the inlet valves instead of a camshaft. This is as advanced as it gets; Fiat claims it will give 20 per cent better economy than a four-cylinder unit and, when it finally breaks cover in 2009, the company won't be licensing the technology to anyone else - so there.

But no one's going to be buying this car for its technology, however advanced. It's the way it looks, inside and out, that matters, and here Fiat has been very intelligent. The shape is terrific, but that's enhanced by the iconography; the boot lid, the badges and the chromium-plated flashes all demonstrate great sensitivity.

Inside, there's clever and careful attention to detail on the things you see and touch most often, with cheaper shared parts and hard plastics on the remainder. Thus the hand-stitched, leather-covered steering wheel and gearlever, the chromium-plated door handles and the concentrically arranged speedometer and rev counter are terrific, while the quality of the boot interior fittings and parcel shelf don't bear such close inspection. That said, you have to be careful reviewing cars such as this, where (as with the MINI) much of the profits are won from owners hitting the options list with a vengeance. There are 549,000 possible configurations for the new Cinquecento, with 11 different colours, 100 accessories, and seven interior trims, so the way your car looks and feels is highly dependent on what you've paid.

The basic front-seat accommodation is good, although the driving position is a slight throwback to Italian cars of yore, when you needed a gorilla's arms and a daschund's legs. We eventually got used to the driving position and were pleased to find a fair bit of headroom, but we didn't like the optional leather seats, which have a different and uncomfortable shape. There's not a great deal of storage space (the door pockets won't hold a bottle of Haig), but there's a useful cubbyhole hidden beneath the gearlever and an optional cupboard under the passenger seat.
Fiat Cinquecento

Part of the design's success is that Fiat has resisted the temptation to try to make a big car out of a small one. It openly admits that it has only catered for the 70th percentile adult in the rear seats - the concept was, after all, called the "three, plus one". I am 6ft tall and fitted where I touched. After half an hour in the back I would have been screaming for mercy, unless I loved the girl in the driver's seat very much. The boot is quite reasonable and, with the easily folded rear seat-backs down, you can amass a mountain of luggage in there.

Do and don't options include 16-inch wheels (say no, they ruin the ride and look silly), a printed car cover that makes your new Cinquecento look like an old one (yes, it's hilarious), houndstooth interior trim (yes, it looks like Gina Lollobrigida is about to join you on the passenger seat), air-conditioning (yes, it's cool), sunroof (no, it reduces the roof height) and chromium-plated bumpers (yes, of course). Fiat's www.Fiat500.com website has been open for a year, and 300,000 folk have registered and specced up their fantasy cars. Some of their suggestions have been taken seriously, such as the (optional) small Italian flags on the coachwork.

Fire up the engine and the driveline feels and sounds like pure Panda. More refined, perhaps, quieter, and with a dusting of more class. The pedal box is big enough for big feet, the clutch is light and the brakes well servoed but easy to use without standing the car on its nose.

The 1.4 engine comes from the Panda 100HP, an annoying variant that rides like a fakir's bed and sounds like a bottle bank dropped off a balcony. In the Cinquecento, however, the engine seems more refined and the ride is mercifully better. With a wheel at each corner it feels something like a well-sprung hammock - different, but not unpleasant. The steering is direct, heavily weighted, with a strong self-centreing effect, but it does have Fiat's push-button system to give extra power assistance at parking speeds.

In fact, the 1.4 is quite a rorty little beast, making fierce noises as you race up and down the six-speed gearbox, turning into bends with vim and cornering on a line that can be adjusted with the throttle. With its high mounted, top-heavy looking body, it looks completely crazy racing around a test track, but in the driver's seat everything is under control and much fun is being had.

The Cinquecento's diminutive size helps make it a great driver's car - that and the view through the famously profiled windscreen, and having the wheels so close that you feel you could reach out and touch them. This intimacy is partly what makes the car so special; it also makes it pretty easy to park, even though you can't see the front or rear bumpers.

A full 50kg (110lb) heavier than the 1.4 petrol version - and 115kg heavier than the 1.2 - the 1.3 Multijet turbodiesel feels every bit of its 980kg on the track. Heavier, softer and slower, it's a very different sort of car to drive but not actually unpleasant and in some senses more true to the spirit of the original Cinquecento. Its mid-range punch makes up for the lack of outright power and the 50mpg-plus EU Urban fuel economy makes a compelling argument. As a day-to-day proposition, the diesel is probably the one to go for, despite being more expensive.

The original Cinquecento was a car that helped build Italy's post-war economy. In its production life it spurred an almost six-fold growth in Fiat production from 250,000 in 1946 to more than 1.4 million in 1967. Dante Giacosa's design was simply brilliant and for many years this little car defined the nation as much as fashion, fine food or organised crime. Fiat's president Vittorio Valletta, together with Italy's restrictive import taxes, meant the Cinquecento thrived in its home market and there will be few Italians who haven't driven one. Even today you can see ageing Cinquecentos puffing over the Futa pass, chuntering along the autostrada, or being chased across Dartmoor by malevolent pigs with men throwing bottles of whisky at them… Of course, the new Cinquecento is not the same thing at all. It's a handbag car, boutique wheels for the middle classes and the super-rich, and de Meo is even thinking of creating a Cinquecento super-interiors carrozzeria in Turin to pander to their every whim. Fiat also claims that the model is a statement about its intentions and new-found confidence. The company wants to be selling 3.5million Fiat-badged cars by 2010 and the Cinquecento is part of that plan.

"We are not positioning Fiat as a European competitor to cheap Korean cars," says de Meo. "That is simply not coherent with the image of Italy. Think about it - if you go into a clothes shop the Italian suit is not going to be the cheapest, is it?" I'm not sure it's fair to place such a weighty responsibility on the bonnet of this tiny, charming car. Perhaps de Meo comes nearest to the truth when he says this is a designer car for the man in the street. In that respect the Cinquecento is democratising retro style for you and me, and I have to admit I find it irresistible.

Fiat Cinquecento [tech/spec]

Fiat Cinquecento

Price/availability: starting at about £9,500 (but beware the options list). On sale next spring.

Engine/transmission: 1,242cc four-cylinder petrol with SOHC, two valves per cyl and variable inlet camshaft timing; 68bhp at 5,500rpm and 75lb ft of torque at 3,000rpm. 1,368cc four-cyl petrol with DOHC and four valves per cyl; 99bhp at 6,000rpm and 97lb ft at 4,250rpm. 1,248cc four-cyl turbodiesel with DOHC and four valves per cyl; 74bhp at 4,000rpm and 107lb ft at 1,500rpm. Five-speed manual transmission in 1.2 petrol and 1.3 turbodiesel, six-speed for 1.4 petrol; five-speed semi-automatic "Dualogic" option for 1.2 and 1.4 petrol. Front-wheel drive.

Performance: 1.2 petrol, top speed 99mph, 0-62mph in 12.9sec, EU Urban fuel consumption 44.1mpg, CO2 emissions 119g/km. 1.4 petrol, 113mph, 10.5sec, 34.5mpg, 149g/km. 1.3 turbodiesel, 103mph, 12.5sec, 53.3mpg, 111g/km.

We like:The most assured and attractive retro design on the market. Fine ride and handling, a good range of small petrol and diesel engines.

We don't like: Rear seats are cramped. Options list will be an expensive trip.

Alternatives: BMW MINI, from £11,595. Fiat Panda, from £6,890. Original Fiat Cinquecento, about £4,000 for a mint-condition 500 saloon.

stuffy · 07-09-2007, 02:47 PM

i actually saw and old fiat500 in Bolton, ON this past weekend,

i couldn't believe how small they actually are, it's almost a car that you wear.

07-09-2007, 12:09 PM	#1
SailDesign Drives: . Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: . Posts: 1,931	Fiat 500 (new one) write-up From the Daily Telegraph (London): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...t/mffiat07.xml Cinquecento reborn Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/07/2007 There was a 50th anniversary party in Turin this week. That's the whole of Turin, you understand. The city simply stopped for 24 hours while shops, bars, clubs and cafés remained open for the city's inhabitants as well as the 10,000 visitors and 1,000 journalists who arrived in town for a Fiat bash known in the motor business as "Mesa Cantata". Fiat Cinquecento All that drinking and dancing celebrated one little car. Dante Giacosa's new Fiat 500, or Cinquecento Nuova, was first presented to the Italian premier 50 years ago on July 4, 1957. Like Britain's Mini, Germany's Beetle and France's 2CV, the Cinquecento was the Italian "People's Car". But the celebration must be a uniquely Italian thing, because I don't recall reading about an all-night party in Birmingham to celebrate the original Mini in 1959, or a 24-hour Mardi Gras in Oxford to wassail BMW's new MINI in 2001. Perhaps Italians celebrate their industry more than we Brits do - go on, tell me something I don't know. Anyway, happy birthday, Cinquecento. Fiat might be almost back in the black these days, but it doesn't just throw massive parties out of teary-eyed nostalgia for a much-loved car that provided most people of a certain age with some sort of amazing adventure - mine involved a blonde, a bottle of Haig whisky, a sunny afternoon on Dartmoor and a pig… (That's enough - Ed) In fact, Fiat has another nuova Cinquecento to sell. With the possible exception of the first Audi TT, the new 500 is the most successful transmogrification from retro-styled concept car (the Trepiúuno, shown at Geneva in 2004) to production model. Just look at it - from its wide-eyed headlamps to its pert bottom, doesn't it just remind you of whisky and a pig? advertisement Well anyway, neither J Mays' VW Beetle, Dave Saddington's BMW MINI or Harm Lagaay's Porsche Boxster managed the time-travelling trip into modern production quite as confidently as Roberto Giolito's new Cinquecento. These days, under Sergio Marchione, Fiat is leaner, more focused and ambitious and the Cinquecento proves it. "When I got the job, my mother said, 'Why don't you do the Cinquecento - that's what everyone wants you to do'," says Fiat brand manager Luca de Meo. Of course, it would be easy to write off the new 500 as a cynical raid on the company's dusty drawing-office plan chest to pillage a retro-wrap for a common-or-garden family hatchback. True, under the new Cinquecento's skin is a Fiat Panda with its ubiquitous MacPherson-strut front, twist-beam rear suspension, but the 500 is also going to be one of the safest cars in its class. Getting four people (just) into an 11ft 7.6in long bodyshell and still getting five Euro NCAP crash-test stars, plus two for pedestrian protection (that's the target, and they're very confident) is some technical feat. More than 65 per cent of the body is made of high-strength nickel and chrome-vanadium alloy steel, which has allowed Fiat's engineers to maximise accommodation with less physical space between passengers and any oncoming impact. It's something like the original Cinquecento, in which your feet were never more than inches from an accident, but much safer. And yes, of course, the 500 is no longer powered by a clattering little 479cc, parallel-twin beneath the bootlid, but there is some genuine innovation under the bonnet. The smallest 68bhp 1.2-litre petrol engine meets stringent Euro 5 exhaust emissions requirements two years before they are mandated. The 98bhp 1.4-litre FIRE engine is a familiar Panda fitment (there will also be a 133bhp turbo version in next year's Abarth sports model) and the 1.3 Multijet turbodiesel still shows the opposition the way home in terms of torque and economy. What's more, from next year all the cars will be fitted with a stop/go system that turns off the engine after a few seconds' idling, reducing emissions by up to 10 per cent in urban conditions - you just press the throttle to start again. There is, however, another parallel-twin engine under development - bless! This will be a 900cc turbocharged petrol unit with 90-110bhp, balance shafts for refinement and electromagnetic actuation of the inlet valves instead of a camshaft. This is as advanced as it gets; Fiat claims it will give 20 per cent better economy than a four-cylinder unit and, when it finally breaks cover in 2009, the company won't be licensing the technology to anyone else - so there. But no one's going to be buying this car for its technology, however advanced. It's the way it looks, inside and out, that matters, and here Fiat has been very intelligent. The shape is terrific, but that's enhanced by the iconography; the boot lid, the badges and the chromium-plated flashes all demonstrate great sensitivity. Inside, there's clever and careful attention to detail on the things you see and touch most often, with cheaper shared parts and hard plastics on the remainder. Thus the hand-stitched, leather-covered steering wheel and gearlever, the chromium-plated door handles and the concentrically arranged speedometer and rev counter are terrific, while the quality of the boot interior fittings and parcel shelf don't bear such close inspection. That said, you have to be careful reviewing cars such as this, where (as with the MINI) much of the profits are won from owners hitting the options list with a vengeance. There are 549,000 possible configurations for the new Cinquecento, with 11 different colours, 100 accessories, and seven interior trims, so the way your car looks and feels is highly dependent on what you've paid. The basic front-seat accommodation is good, although the driving position is a slight throwback to Italian cars of yore, when you needed a gorilla's arms and a daschund's legs. We eventually got used to the driving position and were pleased to find a fair bit of headroom, but we didn't like the optional leather seats, which have a different and uncomfortable shape. There's not a great deal of storage space (the door pockets won't hold a bottle of Haig), but there's a useful cubbyhole hidden beneath the gearlever and an optional cupboard under the passenger seat. Fiat Cinquecento Part of the design's success is that Fiat has resisted the temptation to try to make a big car out of a small one. It openly admits that it has only catered for the 70th percentile adult in the rear seats - the concept was, after all, called the "three, plus one". I am 6ft tall and fitted where I touched. After half an hour in the back I would have been screaming for mercy, unless I loved the girl in the driver's seat very much. The boot is quite reasonable and, with the easily folded rear seat-backs down, you can amass a mountain of luggage in there. Do and don't options include 16-inch wheels (say no, they ruin the ride and look silly), a printed car cover that makes your new Cinquecento look like an old one (yes, it's hilarious), houndstooth interior trim (yes, it looks like Gina Lollobrigida is about to join you on the passenger seat), air-conditioning (yes, it's cool), sunroof (no, it reduces the roof height) and chromium-plated bumpers (yes, of course). Fiat's www.Fiat500.com website has been open for a year, and 300,000 folk have registered and specced up their fantasy cars. Some of their suggestions have been taken seriously, such as the (optional) small Italian flags on the coachwork. Fire up the engine and the driveline feels and sounds like pure Panda. More refined, perhaps, quieter, and with a dusting of more class. The pedal box is big enough for big feet, the clutch is light and the brakes well servoed but easy to use without standing the car on its nose. The 1.4 engine comes from the Panda 100HP, an annoying variant that rides like a fakir's bed and sounds like a bottle bank dropped off a balcony. In the Cinquecento, however, the engine seems more refined and the ride is mercifully better. With a wheel at each corner it feels something like a well-sprung hammock - different, but not unpleasant. The steering is direct, heavily weighted, with a strong self-centreing effect, but it does have Fiat's push-button system to give extra power assistance at parking speeds. In fact, the 1.4 is quite a rorty little beast, making fierce noises as you race up and down the six-speed gearbox, turning into bends with vim and cornering on a line that can be adjusted with the throttle. With its high mounted, top-heavy looking body, it looks completely crazy racing around a test track, but in the driver's seat everything is under control and much fun is being had. The Cinquecento's diminutive size helps make it a great driver's car - that and the view through the famously profiled windscreen, and having the wheels so close that you feel you could reach out and touch them. This intimacy is partly what makes the car so special; it also makes it pretty easy to park, even though you can't see the front or rear bumpers. A full 50kg (110lb) heavier than the 1.4 petrol version - and 115kg heavier than the 1.2 - the 1.3 Multijet turbodiesel feels every bit of its 980kg on the track. Heavier, softer and slower, it's a very different sort of car to drive but not actually unpleasant and in some senses more true to the spirit of the original Cinquecento. Its mid-range punch makes up for the lack of outright power and the 50mpg-plus EU Urban fuel economy makes a compelling argument. As a day-to-day proposition, the diesel is probably the one to go for, despite being more expensive. The original Cinquecento was a car that helped build Italy's post-war economy. In its production life it spurred an almost six-fold growth in Fiat production from 250,000 in 1946 to more than 1.4 million in 1967. Dante Giacosa's design was simply brilliant and for many years this little car defined the nation as much as fashion, fine food or organised crime. Fiat's president Vittorio Valletta, together with Italy's restrictive import taxes, meant the Cinquecento thrived in its home market and there will be few Italians who haven't driven one. Even today you can see ageing Cinquecentos puffing over the Futa pass, chuntering along the autostrada, or being chased across Dartmoor by malevolent pigs with men throwing bottles of whisky at them… Of course, the new Cinquecento is not the same thing at all. It's a handbag car, boutique wheels for the middle classes and the super-rich, and de Meo is even thinking of creating a Cinquecento super-interiors carrozzeria in Turin to pander to their every whim. Fiat also claims that the model is a statement about its intentions and new-found confidence. The company wants to be selling 3.5million Fiat-badged cars by 2010 and the Cinquecento is part of that plan. "We are not positioning Fiat as a European competitor to cheap Korean cars," says de Meo. "That is simply not coherent with the image of Italy. Think about it - if you go into a clothes shop the Italian suit is not going to be the cheapest, is it?" I'm not sure it's fair to place such a weighty responsibility on the bonnet of this tiny, charming car. Perhaps de Meo comes nearest to the truth when he says this is a designer car for the man in the street. In that respect the Cinquecento is democratising retro style for you and me, and I have to admit I find it irresistible. Fiat Cinquecento [tech/spec] Fiat Cinquecento Price/availability: starting at about £9,500 (but beware the options list). On sale next spring. Engine/transmission: 1,242cc four-cylinder petrol with SOHC, two valves per cyl and variable inlet camshaft timing; 68bhp at 5,500rpm and 75lb ft of torque at 3,000rpm. 1,368cc four-cyl petrol with DOHC and four valves per cyl; 99bhp at 6,000rpm and 97lb ft at 4,250rpm. 1,248cc four-cyl turbodiesel with DOHC and four valves per cyl; 74bhp at 4,000rpm and 107lb ft at 1,500rpm. Five-speed manual transmission in 1.2 petrol and 1.3 turbodiesel, six-speed for 1.4 petrol; five-speed semi-automatic "Dualogic" option for 1.2 and 1.4 petrol. Front-wheel drive. Performance: 1.2 petrol, top speed 99mph, 0-62mph in 12.9sec, EU Urban fuel consumption 44.1mpg, CO2 emissions 119g/km. 1.4 petrol, 113mph, 10.5sec, 34.5mpg, 149g/km. 1.3 turbodiesel, 103mph, 12.5sec, 53.3mpg, 111g/km. We like:The most assured and attractive retro design on the market. Fine ride and handling, a good range of small petrol and diesel engines. We don't like: Rear seats are cramped. Options list will be an expensive trip. Alternatives: BMW MINI, from £11,595. Fiat Panda, from £6,890. Original Fiat Cinquecento, about £4,000 for a mint-condition 500 saloon.

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07-09-2007, 02:47 PM	#2
stuffy Drives: 06 yaris 5-dr le man Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: ontario, canada Posts: 699	i actually saw and old fiat500 in Bolton, ON this past weekend, i couldn't believe how small they actually are, it's almost a car that you wear.