The little bugger is growing on me a bit. Last night, I hopped onto Car Soup to check out how much a used 500 Abarth would cost, just to settle my curiosity. For those wondering, I was able to locate a few of them for around $17,000 for 2013 models with low miles. I'm not seriously considering getting one, but the Fiat experience thus far has improved my initial impression of the vehicles. The get up and go from a dead stop was among my complaints about my base level 500, and an Abarth variation of it should solve that issue (I hope).
I love how easy it is to squeeze around traffic and snug into parking spaces with the Fiat. A car this small is one that you wouldn't think would need reverse sensing, but I found myself wishing the 500 had it, just so I could more confidently take on extreme parallel parking challenges, which is a new sport I made up now that I've got an itty bitty car to play it with. As it is, my concern about not cracking a bumper and getting stuck with the cost of repair makes me shy away from trying to squeeze into spaces that I'd otherwise try to occupy (I didn't spring for the daily insurance beyond liability fee, so any damage I do to this car comes out of my hide).
I haven't been doing too much to really beat up on the Fiat, because I don't really believe in trashing a rental car just because it's not mine. I have been trying to see what it's capable of, but for the most part, it's been busy running errands and doing routine stuff. You might think that being an Italian car, I would have picked up some Italian take out for lunch the other day, but you'd be mistaken.
This little Italian has a driver who tries to avoid gluten, which makes most pasta dishes off limits, so I instead took it to a fantastic place in Robbinsdale to pick up some gluten free cranberry curry from Mai Thai restaurant. What's almost as cool as the food is the fact that this restaurant has a table stacked with car magazines to browse through while waiting for carryout. That's a nice little bonus.
If I hadn't spent the past couple days revving around and trying to test the limits of how fast my 500 can pick up speed, I'd probably be able to rave about the fuel economy. I had to refill the tank today, and from just under 1/8 of a tank remaining to full took 9 gallons.
Fiat recommends premium fuel, according to the sticker on the inside of the gas filler lid. I actually scoffed at the car while standing at the gas pump, saying aloud that it could dream on or transform into an Abarth before I'd be buying it premium fuel. I'm sure the guy at the next pump over was wondering who I was talking to, but who cares?
The nice thing was that the same sticker indicated that my Fiat would be willing to settle for 87 octane fuel if necessary. I compromised and fed it 89 octane. That's one thing I can credit my Mustang with -it doesn't have expensive tastes. My Mustang was designed to dine of the cheap 87 octane stuff, and I'm happy to save a few bucks at the gas pump. I'm not going to bother calculating my mileage from the last tank or that of this current tank of gas, because I have no plans to drive my 500 like a hypermiler ...or like a reasonable person, for that matter. Keep in mind, this little Fiat has to fill some pretty fast horseshoes while my Mustang is in the shop, so even if it was built to be quick instead of fast (yes, there is a difference), this Fiat and I are going to strive to have some fun while we're paired up -MPGs be damned!
So far, I haven't had much problem hauling stuff around. My gym bag fits into the little trunk space just fine, and I haven't had to transport more than one other passenger at once since the day my parents were in town, so no complaints about the space inside the 500, or the lack thereof.
I did subject the Fiat to a little test I like to call "The Costco Challenge" today. I picked up two large bags of dog food for Pavlov even though he seems to prefer eating poo, a bag of popcorn for weekend snacking, and some new pillows to replace the ones that Pavlov shredded up (he's a lovely dog... when he's asleep). I had to fold down the seats to fit this stuff in the car, and in order to do that, I had to remove the little plastic cover that hides the trunk space contents from view. I flipped the rear seats ahead after pushing the headrests down as far as they could go, but they only went partially down before hitting the back of the front seats, which I had to adjust forward so that the rear seats could fold the rest of the way. I suppose I could have removed the headrests all together, but I don't want them rattling around in the back of the car. Then, it all fit and I scooted away home. It took some doing, but the Fiat conquered the Costco Challenge!
The "pop" sound the suspension makes over bumps and ruts persists, though I did figure out that sport mode doesn't appear to have anything to do with adjusting the suspension. Rather, sport mode adjusts the rev bands for the selection of gears.
In sport mode, the car winds up to much higher revolutions per minute before shifting to a higher gear. This difference is only evident if the car is put into D instead of using the autostick option for gear selection.
The 500 is front wheel drive. Getting it moving over the icy roadways isn't always smooth, but could be worse. I found myself thinking how cool it would be to have an AWD 500. It would be like the subcompact car market's version of the Jeep Wrangler with its short little wheel base. I'd probably actually get kind of serious about the idea of buying one if it had an AWD option that would also impart another inch or two of ground clearance.... if for no other reason than how peculiar and fun I think it would be. As it is with its front wheel drive set up, the ESC (Electronic Stability Control) light on the dash flashes quite often because the ice on the streets mean that system has to be engaged to get the car moving most of the time. I have been using the autostick set up rather than just plan Drive because it's more fun and because I can start the car out in 2nd gear to get moving with less tire spin on the ice packed roads here in Minneapolis. Being used to my Mustang's rear wheel drive set up with snow tires, moving to a front wheel drive set up feels odd. There are some times when I take a corner expecting to whip around it in a bit of a slide so I can bump the car's rump around and then propel it to where I've aimed the front of with a quick little blast on the gas pedal, and it just doesn't happen because I'm not in my Mustang. The Fiat, in contrast, stutters on ice. It inches and inches until it builds up enough speed to match tire spin to grip, but eventually, it gets going, sans any fun slides or spins.
There are other aspects of the 500 that I dislike, though. Most annoying is the alarm bell that sounds if you start up the car before buckling your seat belt. The high pitched, sustained beep that the car makes until you've buckled up is like a horrible sounding alarm clock -the kind you throw against the wall not in hope of having a little longer to snooze, but in the hopes that it breaks so you never have to hear that horrible bleating again. A toned down little chiming sound or even a thundering voice swearing at you in Italian to "buckle your f-ing seat belt!" would be preferable, and would have spared the 500 a lot of resentment. It's not like I'm going to drive around without my seat belt. After all, the size of the 500 puts it in the deathtrap class of cars when contemplating how well one would fare in a collision with a truck or SUV, so the seatbelt is a must in my book. I just don't need the car to yell at me to make me wear it.
The stereo sucks. For starters, I can't find an auxillary jack for plugging in my MP3 player -which is just as well, because I broke the silly thing a while ago anyway... but if I did have a functioning player and did want to listen to it in the car, I'd be reduced to using one of those radio tuner adapters, and they are horrible. The music stops as soon as the ignition is shut off, which is a disappointment. My Mustang will keep the tunes going for several minutes or until the car door is opened so that I can listen to the end of a song or the last part of whatever is being discussed on MPR without having to idle the engine while parked -surely it couldn't be too hard to integrate a feature like that into the stereo offerings on the 500.
Beyond that, the controls are bad. There's no knob -and while that may seem minor, just trust me when I say, it's actually very annoying to have to jab at a button over and over again to raise or lower the volume or to change the radio station. Also, the spot on the steering wheel where it would have made sense to place redundant stereo controls is occupied by bluetooth phone controls. I hate that. put that crap on the center stack and give me redundant stereo controls on the wheel. Unless something very important is happening, I don't usually care to talk on my phone while driving.
The bass setting on the stereo was set to +2 when I picked up the car, and already, it seems to max out what the speakers are capable of handling without distorting things horribly. I'm not even playing music that's particularly bass heavy (I grabbed a Broken Bells CD to listen to on my way out the door yesterday). I'm going to experiment with how high I can bump the bass on the stereo before body panels start to shake off the car. That should be fun.
Armrests... or rather , the armrest... there's only one, and it's for the driver. That's just fine, I suppose, as long as you're the driver. But, when there's a passenger -actually, more like, when there's a male passenger - in the car with you, you'll find their elbow creeping over the tiny chasm between the seats to try to use your armrest. I suppose it's more of a matter of how we're conditioned as we grow up. Men are taught to spread out and take up lots of space, whereas women are urged to cross their legs and minimize the area that they occupy. Well, whatever, but I tell you this: when I am at the wheel, I am El Cap-i-tan, and I lay claim to that armrest for myself, so don't even think of trying to elbow it away from me! If you don't like it, take it up with Fiat. It wasn't my idea to only have one armrest in the car.
The window controls are the kind that car makers like to call "European style" -which they can more easily get away with on a car that is actually European, like the Fiat. However, what that really means is that they were too cheap to retool the interior panels to suit having the driver on differing sides of the vehicle depending on which car market is consuming the product, so they just plop the controls on the center stack and make misery for everybody regardless of where in the world they are. The windows do have an auto down function, where you can click it once and have the window go down all the way without having to hold onto the control -nice.... but they lack an auto up function that does the same thing in reverse. My Mustang has that, and I use it all the time when dealing with ticket and pay kiosks in the downtown parking ramps. It might not be so bad if I didn't have to reach over and hold down a button on the center stack instead of just flicking my wrist over to a door mounted control to accomplish this.
Along those same lines, there are no door lock buttons in the Fiat unless you count the ones on the switchblade style key fob. I don't think the Fiat does autolock of the doors, either -or at least if it does, I haven't heard any click or sound to signify that it has happened. This may not seem like a big deal, but I happen to live in a neighborhood that has had more than its share of carjackings and folks who demonstrate a great deal of criminally asshole-ish behavior, so that kind of thing does become important in my neck of the woods. It's a security factor that is not nice to think about, but important enough that it can't be ignored. There's nothing like pulling up to a stop light and having some deranged drunk guy stagger up and try to open your car door. That'll make you glad for doors that automatically lock once the car reaches a certain speed in forward gear. With the Fiat, I'm likely to end up with some creepy drunk stranger in the passenger seat, trying to hog my armrest. No good. Even having a little lock switch that I could flick to lock the doors rather than having to muck around with the key fob, which is lodged in the ignition would give me more confidence about taking the 500 out and about in my neigborhood.
The nightime display of the 500 is not to my liking. It's orange. Not a bad color, but not something I like to have glowing at me all the time. It makes me think of the yield light on the traffic semaphores, which make me think of slowing down, and that's not fun. Worse yet, I don't think the color of the dash's backlighting can be changed. We're stuck with orange. My Mustang lets me customize the dash cluster backlights, and I like to keep them set to a cool blue, not a blazing orange. I turned down the intensity setting a few notches to give my eyes a break from it. On the bright side though, if you happen to love glaring orange, then you won't have any problem with the Fiat's display backlight.
The aesthetic of the 500 is seeming less off-putting to me now. I've been encountering other subcompacts while out and about, and being behind the wheel of one such small car myself has made me acutely aware of them in a way I never was before. The 500 is not the slickest, the swoopiest, the fastest, the most aggressive, nor is it particularly attractive... but it is distinctive. When driving by a glass fronted building today, I glanced over and noticed my car's reflection in the window and thought to myself, "it's so ugly, it's kind of cute." It's like one of those little lap dogs with smooshy faces that isn't good for a whole lot aside from taking up space and licking its butt, though can sometimes be treated like a fashion accessory -so Fiat can take that compliment (and that's what I'm calling that particular assessment) for whatever they think it's worth.
Aside from a mashed up white 500 that was sitting in the lot at the auto body shop where I left my Mustang, I have yet to encounter another 500 while out motoring about in mine. There's a Fiat dealership not too far from where I live, but not many of the little things scooting around the areas I frequent. I think if I spent a little more time uptown, that might change, but then I'd also have to put up with being around a bunch of hipsters and douche bags, so I'll just stay the odd duck out in my Fiat, I suppose.
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