Fiat 500 Revealed: California Dreamin’

Soave was hired away from Volkswagen of America where she most recently was  responsible for leading consumer marketing initiatives.  While at VW, she also served as the head of advertising and communications activities for all large passenger vehicles and SUVs.
  
  
   An Italian-American, Soave comes from an Italian family and speaks fluent Italian.  She even had relatives who worked at Fiat’s Cassino factory in Piedimonte San Germano. “I spent my whole life playing down my Italian connections and now I’m embracing them,” she told the reporters.
    
According to her, the “Fiat 500 appeals to dual conflicting poles that drive automotive purchase decisions: the brain as well as the heart.” and said that she “considers an automobile as the balance of good character and pattern, at a good cost.” She said their goal was to similar to that of the creators of the original 500, “to create a tiny car (that)  is indeed pleasing.”

 The new one is was not nearly as tiny as the original Fiat 500 which was displayed next to the new car during her speech.
Soave referred at times to 40 mpg but the EPA recently rated the car at 38 mpg on the highway, 30 mpg city and 33 mpg combined, falling just short of the magic 40 mpg figure.
 

   
She also mentioned that while mileage-wise it matches the Toyota Yaris,  that the 500’s main appeal will be that it has Italian style, something that the Yaris doesn’t have, plus when you consider the usual options ordered, the 500 will deliver more for less. “The Yaris gets you from point A to point B, but with only a beige or gray interior.”  The 500 will have over a dozen interior choices, i.e. be more like a fashion accessory that can be customized to the buyer’s taste.
   
She had better ammo against the Mini where she expressed confidence that the 500 will be a real bargain by comparison. “We’re at a $4,000 worth advantage vs. a Mini,” she said underlining the price difference between two similarly equipped models.
 
The 500 will have an astonishing amount of exterior and interior colors, so much so that the possibility exists that no two built for North America will be alike.
  
The price base will start at $15,995 for the base model, called the “Pop” package. Then you can move up to the “Sport” model at $17,500 and the “Lounge” at $19,500.
 
There are minor trim and specification changes to each model. The Lounge, for instance, comes with a glass roof fixed in place.
   
She left the door open for later versions to be introduced, such as a convertible (though with fixed side window supports so you might more accurately describe it as a “roll back sunroof”), and an Abarth performance coupe.

   Soave told the Motor Press Guild members that the car was extensively redesigned for North America, including seven airbags, electric steering, four wheel discs, bi-halogen headlamps and changes in the front and side impact equipment. Even the front bucket seats were made wider, presumably to fit American derrieres.

  The car will be built in Toluca, Mexico but the commercial the reporters were shown made no reference to that and presumably Americans will think it’s made in Italy or the U.S. The same plant previously did the PT Cruiser and presently builds another Chrysler car.
 
 Ms. Soave also brought along an engineer who talked about the engine which has variable valve timing. The inline four displaces 1368 cc, and has a belt driven overhead single cam, 16 valves and what they call “hydraulic end-pivot roller rockers.”  The injection is sequential multi point. The block is iron with aluminum head. It is rated 101 hp at 6,500 rpm, 98 lbs.-ft. of torque at 4,000 rpm.
Premium fuel is recommended for best performance, but not required.
    
There are two transmissions, a 6-speed automatic or a 5-speed manual. Soave thinks the automatic will be a favorite because she said “many young people have never learned to drive a manual shift.”
 

 
Soave said Chrysler has signed 130 dealers to sell the cars nationwide. She admitted that some dealers “may have to sell the car across larger territories than they presently sell their Chrysler cars.”
  The warranty will be four years or 50,000 miles.
 
As an example of how much thought Fiat has put into every little detail, there are even more than half a dozen options on the key case and on the badges you can order for the side of the car.

 
ONE MAN’S VIEW     
This reporter’s take?  The new 500 is cute, (attractive) and does a good job of recalling the original , just as good a job as the BMW Mini did of reproducing the ambiance of the original BMC Minis. One potential problem is the nagging thought that it is made in Mexico–should that get mentioned by journalists enough to stick–it could dilute their ad campaign which tries to make it seem oh-so-European.  But, in their defense, I have not heard of a great deal of problems with the PT Cruisers made there. So if there are not any major quality control problems maybe that won’t come up. The fact that this car is European-designed will be the great draw. The commercial shown laid special emphasis on Italian flair, style and fun.
   
Secondly, you wonder if Chrysler has really thought this out, in making such a small car their first Fiat re-introduced in America. The new Mini has proved that you can only go so far with an original small “cute” design and, subsequently,  each new Mini model introduced has to be bigger and is thus departing from the original “cute” shape. (The exception is the very small Mini Coupe concept, but that has yet to be approved for production, to my knowledge.) So it’s possible the new 500 might have a limited audience of people in the U.S. who want a modern car shaped like a 40-plus year old Fiat, and once that saturation point is reached, nobody else will want one. On the other hand, there’s already talk in the press of an all new model being developed by  Fiat for the U.S. that would be free of having to conform to the 500’s shape. And like the Mini, there’s talk of an electric version of the 500 being available as well, which would bring the ecology fans into the tent. Soave seemed to discourage any talk of diesels, even though that would gain them considerable gas mileage.
  
One step Fiat is taking that will be interesting to enthusiasts is racing the 500. Soave said there is a racing series they are thinking of entering and this could help make the new 500 popular among enthusiasts.
   
Overall, though, one wonders if the lackluster economy in the U.S. of late has made those young texting, twittering, blogging young folks that are so prominent in their opening TV commercial no longer a customer base that one can count on. If they would have brought the 500 to America back to America simultaneous to its roll-out  in Europe several years ago, there was the chance it could have been perceived of as the “newest /latest thing” but now it’s old news in Europe and you have to ask: do the trend setters buy old news?

Brian Winer, a native Bostonian, who was a Senior Technician at Toyota Motor Company’s United States Technical Center for almost 17 years, now writes auto reports and books from Redondo Beach, California.