2012 Fiat , P.J. O’Rourke Goes Hunting for the Soul of the 2012 Fiat 500
There’s an idea in automotive marketing that it’s laughably hard to get Americans into small cars. The idea has been around at least since the laughable Nash Metropolitan. Given the average body mass index of Americans, the idea may be literally true. But marketing has nothing to do with literal truth. In the highly figurative world of selling things, Americans can be sold on small cars. Junior gearheads screech the streets in little tuners. Their boomer parents had a long love affair (uncharacteristically monogamous) with the VW Bug. And a million of us geezers have spent the better part of a century yearning for a Morgan three-wheeler, a bug-eye Sprite, or a Morris Mini Minor. We like small cars as long as they have a big presence. Laugh with us, not at us. No thanks, You-Think-You’re-So-Smart Fortwo.
The Fiat 500 shows that Chrysler can tell the difference between a small pleasure and a small joke. The 500 is pleasant and serious, maybe too serious. I spent three days driving hundreds of miles through southern Michigan and couldn’t quite decide whether the car has enough brio and blithe charm for a market that can give short cars short shrift.
It’s certainly got style. Plenty of retro designs have been put into production, but the 500 seems like reproduction (and all the fun that entails).
Looking at the 500, you might think you’re in for a rackety return to the Rome of a younger day. Bop and scat down the Via Veneto doing la dolce vita on the cheap. Splash right through the Trevi Fountain sluicing the Chianti stains off the floor mats. Pull up on the sidewalk café’s sidewalk and park under the checkered tablecloth.
Looking at the 500, you might think a lot of things. That it can turn around in its own length. That the engine can be repaired with bobby pins and trattoria gnocchi. That Chrysler has imported a tiny mobile shrine to Gina Lollobrigida.
For good or ill, none of this is true. The 2012 Fiat 500 shares not a single bulge or curve with its 1957 namesake. That cinquecento is something of a mirror image of this remake, with a two-cylinder engine hanging out the back and driving the rear wheels versus today’s front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. The new car evokes the old car because Fiat adhered to the original spirit of oddball modernism, a modernism so oddball that after 54 years it still astonishes.
Today’s 500 hulks beside yore’s. It’s more than 800 pounds heavier, 22.7 inches longer, 7.6 inches taller, and wider by a foot. Yet the 500 remains a small car—six inches shorter and about 250 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper, nearly two feet less lengthy than a Honda Fit, and not as abbreviated as a Scion iQ but possessed of a back seat that’s something other than a package shelf for elves. The 500, though, is more than 500 pounds heftier than the Dumb Forall. It won’t turn on a lira, because the Italian lira doesn’t exist anymore, but it will make a circle within four supermarket parking-lot spaces. And you can put two 500s end to end in one supermarket parking-lot space if that’s the kind of thing you like to do.
Low-speed steering is so twitchy fast that I wondered if the wheel was being turned by my inner child on a sugar buzz. And the brakes are highly decisive. I’d call them grabby if I weren’t old enough to have driven small cars—the Nash Metropolitan—in which the brakes grabbed nothing.
All the crucial elements of the small car are encompassed in the Fiat 500, or seemed to be until I drove it several hundred miles. That’s not wholly a criticism. The quick—arguably too quick—steering relaxes once a prudent residential-neighborhood rate of travel has been reached. Above 50 mph, you might as well be at the tiller of a C-class Mercedes.
The Fiat’s ride is Mercedes-like as well, if a C-class had a 90-inch wheelbase. Seat comfort and legroom are a forward-cabin upgrade from those of the 500’s competitors.
I don’t have much to report about handling. The Fiat does so. Southern Michigan is not full of off-camber esses with decreasing radii, but I tried to find places to do unrestrained things. The 500 responded with controlled restraint—no hits, no runs, no errors. Neither oversteer nor understeer was evident. Perhaps the back of the Fiat is so near the front that it’s hard to tell the difference. Torque steer was negligible. Grip was close enough for government work of the highway-department kind.
Southern Michigan does have unpaved roads. The Fiat showed no particular competence or incompetence in the dirt. Washboards were smoothed somewhat. Lost traction was resupplied if and when it was really needed. Skids were calmly linear.
The 500 gives the impression of being zippy, as a small car must. But it’s an impression. A base-trim Chrysler 300, driven by a retiree, walked away from me at a stoplight, redline and speed-shift as I might. The 1.4-liter, 101-hp engine is best described as a 1.4-liter, 101-hp engine. Turbocharging is on the way. Come soon.
First gear in the five-speed manual is up to the job, but the four other gears should get ratio demotions. I don’t know what the fifth gear is for. It can be used on the highway to more or less remain at the speed limit if you prop a brick on the gas pedal.
Left in fourth, however, the Fiat is excellent on interstates. It’s quiet, fast enough, tracks like a railroad train, and is impervious to truck turbulence. I forgot I was in a small car.
Forgetting I was in a small car was fine until I remembered that, most of the time in the 500, I was forgetting I was in a small car. Considering how much personality the Fiat 500 has, it should have more personality.
But the small cars I like best are antiques, and so am I. The Fiat 500 presumably was created to appeal to young people. I happened to have some on hand. While I was driving the 500, I was also teaching a course at Hillsdale College. I showed the car to my journalism class, a ready-made focus group of 18-to-22-year-olds.
I have good news for Chrysler. Kids have no memory of the Fiat brand and the tribulations thereof. “Fix It Again, Tony” was a quip lost on them.
And I have news that’s not so good. Recession-era youth are inured to minimalism. They were indifferent to the Fiat’s bold arrays of smallness in price, gas appetite, and size. “It could be a little bigger,” said one. They get used Corollas if cash is tight.
And then I have news—I don’t know whether it’s bad or good—about what I think is the 500’s best marketing point, its appearance. This came from my star pupil, Ms. B. On one hand, she was referencing an international design icon that drives sales in more than 4000 retail outlets in the U.S. alone and generates half a billion dollars in annual revenue. On the other hand . . .
There’s an idea in automotive marketing that it’s laughably hard to get Americans into small cars. The idea has been around at least since the laughable Nash Metropolitan. Given the average body mass index of Americans, the idea may be literally true. But marketing has nothing to do with literal truth. In the highly figurative world of selling things, Americans can be sold on small cars. Junior gearheads screech the streets in little tuners. Their boomer parents had a long love affair (uncharacteristically monogamous) with the VW Bug. And a million of us geezers have spent the better part of a century yearning for a Morgan three-wheeler, a bug-eye Sprite, or a Morris Mini Minor. We like small cars as long as they have a big presence. Laugh with us, not at us. No thanks, You-Think-You’re-So-Smart Fortwo.
The Fiat 500 shows that Chrysler can tell the difference between a small pleasure and a small joke. The 500 is pleasant and serious, maybe too serious. I spent three days driving hundreds of miles through southern Michigan and couldn’t quite decide whether the car has enough brio and blithe charm for a market that can give short cars short shrift.
It’s certainly got style. Plenty of retro designs have been put into production, but the 500 seems like reproduction (and all the fun that entails).
Looking at the 500, you might think you’re in for a rackety return to the Rome of a younger day. Bop and scat down the Via Veneto doing la dolce vita on the cheap. Splash right through the Trevi Fountain sluicing the Chianti stains off the floor mats. Pull up on the sidewalk café’s sidewalk and park under the checkered tablecloth.
Looking at the 500, you might think a lot of things. That it can turn around in its own length. That the engine can be repaired with bobby pins and trattoria gnocchi. That Chrysler has imported a tiny mobile shrine to Gina Lollobrigida.
For good or ill, none of this is true. The 2012 Fiat 500 shares not a single bulge or curve with its 1957 namesake. That cinquecento is something of a mirror image of this remake, with a two-cylinder engine hanging out the back and driving the rear wheels versus today’s front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. The new car evokes the old car because Fiat adhered to the original spirit of oddball modernism, a modernism so oddball that after 54 years it still astonishes.
Today’s 500 hulks beside yore’s. It’s more than 800 pounds heavier, 22.7 inches longer, 7.6 inches taller, and wider by a foot. Yet the 500 remains a small car—six inches shorter and about 250 pounds lighter than a Mini Cooper, nearly two feet less lengthy than a Honda Fit, and not as abbreviated as a Scion iQ but possessed of a back seat that’s something other than a package shelf for elves. The 500, though, is more than 500 pounds heftier than the Dumb Forall. It won’t turn on a lira, because the Italian lira doesn’t exist anymore, but it will make a circle within four supermarket parking-lot spaces. And you can put two 500s end to end in one supermarket parking-lot space if that’s the kind of thing you like to do.
Low-speed steering is so twitchy fast that I wondered if the wheel was being turned by my inner child on a sugar buzz. And the brakes are highly decisive. I’d call them grabby if I weren’t old enough to have driven small cars—the Nash Metropolitan—in which the brakes grabbed nothing.
All the crucial elements of the small car are encompassed in the Fiat 500, or seemed to be until I drove it several hundred miles. That’s not wholly a criticism. The quick—arguably too quick—steering relaxes once a prudent residential-neighborhood rate of travel has been reached. Above 50 mph, you might as well be at the tiller of a C-class Mercedes.
The Fiat’s ride is Mercedes-like as well, if a C-class had a 90-inch wheelbase. Seat comfort and legroom are a forward-cabin upgrade from those of the 500’s competitors.
I don’t have much to report about handling. The Fiat does so. Southern Michigan is not full of off-camber esses with decreasing radii, but I tried to find places to do unrestrained things. The 500 responded with controlled restraint—no hits, no runs, no errors. Neither oversteer nor understeer was evident. Perhaps the back of the Fiat is so near the front that it’s hard to tell the difference. Torque steer was negligible. Grip was close enough for government work of the highway-department kind.
Southern Michigan does have unpaved roads. The Fiat showed no particular competence or incompetence in the dirt. Washboards were smoothed somewhat. Lost traction was resupplied if and when it was really needed. Skids were calmly linear.
The 500 gives the impression of being zippy, as a small car must. But it’s an impression. A base-trim Chrysler 300, driven by a retiree, walked away from me at a stoplight, redline and speed-shift as I might. The 1.4-liter, 101-hp engine is best described as a 1.4-liter, 101-hp engine. Turbocharging is on the way. Come soon.
First gear in the five-speed manual is up to the job, but the four other gears should get ratio demotions. I don’t know what the fifth gear is for. It can be used on the highway to more or less remain at the speed limit if you prop a brick on the gas pedal.
Left in fourth, however, the Fiat is excellent on interstates. It’s quiet, fast enough, tracks like a railroad train, and is impervious to truck turbulence. I forgot I was in a small car.
Forgetting I was in a small car was fine until I remembered that, most of the time in the 500, I was forgetting I was in a small car. Considering how much personality the Fiat 500 has, it should have more personality.
But the small cars I like best are antiques, and so am I. The Fiat 500 presumably was created to appeal to young people. I happened to have some on hand. While I was driving the 500, I was also teaching a course at Hillsdale College. I showed the car to my journalism class, a ready-made focus group of 18-to-22-year-olds.
I have good news for Chrysler. Kids have no memory of the Fiat brand and the tribulations thereof. “Fix It Again, Tony” was a quip lost on them.
And I have news that’s not so good. Recession-era youth are inured to minimalism. They were indifferent to the Fiat’s bold arrays of smallness in price, gas appetite, and size. “It could be a little bigger,” said one. They get used Corollas if cash is tight.
And then I have news—I don’t know whether it’s bad or good—about what I think is the 500’s best marketing point, its appearance. This came from my star pupil, Ms. B. On one hand, she was referencing an international design icon that drives sales in more than 4000 retail outlets in the U.S. alone and generates half a billion dollars in annual revenue. On the other hand . . .
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