Review – 2012 Fiat 500 Is a Stylish, Fun City Car

Posted by Michael Waterman on September 13th, 2011

2012 Fiat 500

“This might be the cutest little thing I’ve seen in years.”

No, that’s not the first line I uttered upon seeing my newborn child, but the phrase that popped in my head as I walked toward the 2012 Fiat 500, keys jingling in my hand. Ablaze in bright red paint and freshly washed, this little car was cute. Ridiculously cute.

Then I opened the door and took in the stylish mix of red and white that had my chest nearly bursting with pride since Fiat was brilliant enough to supply a car that perfectly matches the colors of my alma mater, the University of Utah. Stylish. Ridiculously stylish.

A white, leather-wrapped steering wheel grinned back at me. The white climate controls and radio were offset in more blazing red that complements the white-topped seats and headrests. You want style? The tiny Fiat 500 delivers big-time style.

Read our 2012 Fiat 500 review

Read our 2012 Fiat 500 Convertible review

2012 Fiat 500

I instantly wondered if I was metro enough to drive such a car. Particularly since I had spent the prior week driving a six-foot, four-inch-tall Ram Powerwagon.

I was leaping from a mass of masculinity to a car a friend described as “perfect for a high school cheerleader.”

Then I sat down and realized, wow, the 500 is small, really small. I’m not a big guy, but at 139-inches, the Fiat 500 is seven inches shorter than a Mini Cooper, 19 inches longer than the Scion iQ that maxes out at 120 inches, and a whopping 33-inches longer than a Smartfortwo that is only 106-inches long.

If you’re looking for a small, city car, you essentially have these four choices. And frankly, the only two you’ll want to consider if you live in a suburb and commute to a city are the Fiat 500 and the Mini Cooper. The other two truly are city cars in every way and best enjoyed away from the freeway.

It took five minutes to sync my iPhone to the Blue & Me hands-free tech that let me call my young kids and tell them they would love the car I was driving home. How can any child under the age of 10 not fall for a red and white car that looks like it fits in the bed of last week’s Ram Powerwagon?

Lots of Features for a Low Price

The 500 is a great representation of Chrysler Group’s goals of providing a lot of features for a low price. My test car (the base Fiat 500 Pop) starts at $15,500. For an additional $2,250, including a $500 destination fee, I enjoyed the Bluetooth Blue & Me system, a leather-wrapped steering wheel with integrated volume and tuning buttons, a Bose premium audio package and the red and white seats. After a $500 Blue & Me discount that wiped out the $500 upgrade cost, this Fiat 500 weighed in at $17,750. That’s a lot of luxury features for the price and if you can swing the upgrade from a base model, I recommend it. In fact, this week I had the chance to drive a base 500 without the interior upgrades and it felt cheap by comparison.

Remarkably, you can add every bell and whistle to the most expensive Lounge trim of the 500, including upgraded paint, a six-speed transmission (my test car sports only five), upgraded interior and more and you can’t break the $22,000 barrier. Granted, that’s nearly a $5,000 increase over the price of my seemingly well-equipped 500 tester, but I can easily imagine a decent number of buyers justifying the upgrades.

It’s just so darn cute, after all. Even more so in person.

2012 Fiat 500

Driving the Fiat 500 in the City and on the Highway

I left the parking garage and spent 30 minutes tooling around town. This is where the Fiat 500 shines. No turn feels too tight. No parking space looks even remotely difficult to navigate. The 101-horsepower engine matched to the five-speed manual transmission is sprightly enough to zip the 2,300-pound 500 in and out of traffic but you’ll never for a moment attempt to race a Honda Fit or Ford Fiesta off the line. You’re smart enough to know you’ll get left behind.

But you don’t care because those drivers aren’t catching the eyes of passersby. They’re not driving a car anywhere remotely as stylish.

Some like the Fiat. Others don’t.

I like the Fiat 500.

But once you zip up the freeway on ramp, you begin to understand the sentiment of those who literally look down on this tiny car.

As I mentioned, last week I drove a Ram Powerwagon. That’s a machine that makes you feel invincible. It’s six-feet, four-inches tall with 383 horses under the hood. You feel powerful as you motor down the freeway.

Driving down I-15 at 75 miles per hour in the tiny Fiat 500, you feel quite vincible. Now I know you don’t often hear vincible in a sentence. But it’s a real word and the most descriptive term that screams in my head as I weave around an eighteen-wheeler and discover what it’s like to see my life pass before my eyes.

At 75 mph, there is a touch more acceleration in that little engine. There is a tiny bit of available torque. Yet I’m basically at peak power and feeling vincible in the same way 2006 Heisman Trophy runner-up Vince Young made USC feel when he willed the University of Texas to the national championship victory on one of the last plays of the 2006 Rose Bowl.

I feel vincible the way World Wide Wrestling Federation Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon dominated all rival wrestling groups on his way to becoming a billionaire in the early 2000s.

I don’t like feeling vincible.

Trust me on this one: the Fiat 500 is meant for cities and suburbs, not freeways. I managed to muscle the 500 up to 80 miles per hour when no one was around and it felt solid. The problem is the other, larger cars on American freeways. They’re scary. So I spent the majority of my highway time in the right, slow lane, keeping a safe traveling distance from the cars around me.

Crash test ratings are not yet available for the Fiat 500. But my basic understanding of physics persuades me to err on the side of caution and avoid any and all vehicles larger than the 500 whenever possible.

The Vehix View

Drive the Fiat 500 in the city and suburbs and you’ll be very happy. It’s cute. It’s stylish. It’s fuel efficient (I averaged 39 mpg over 200 miles of driving). It’s fun to drive around town. Really fun. It offers plenty of available tech features to ensure the driver’s comfort. Yet it won’t ever become my choice for a long road trip or any significant highway driving.

Although the Fiat 500 offers seating for four, rear-seat legroom is compromised if anyone of average size or bigger sits in the front seat. But used as the cute, two-person runabout it’s intelligently designed to be, the Fiat 500 could be an enjoyable and affordable choice. Just like the original Fiat 500 that preceded it back in the 1960s and 1970s.

2012 Fiat 500