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Think of the Fiat 500 as a cheeky city runabout that works, looks good and also enhances your sex appeal
To build a new Fiat 500 should be enough of a story. It ought to be perfectly sufficient to create a visual revival of the car that Italy, the unchallenged international champion of automotive cool, holds dearest to its heart.
The car that embodies effortless Italian style, the car that epitomises the Italian ability to accomplish miracles from simple ingredients, the car in which at least two generations of Italians learnt to drive, and in which they travelled and learned the lie of their land.
Also, of course, it was the car (and here we perhaps get to the root of their affection for it) in which they learnt, through nocturnal lay-by fumblings, how to do the amore thing under constrained physical circumstances.
But no, even all of that isn't sufficient for the ambition of the revitalised Fiat. The 500 is more than a revival, more than a superficial visual cash-in. It's also what Fiat has historically done well and is set to do even better now: a small car that manages to prevent you longing for a bigger one. Where, four years ago, Fiat as a company was near-bankrupt, not just financially but creatively, the new 500 stands for the renewed purpose and quick-wittedness of the whole company.
It won't just be a firework car - one that explodes into our consciousness, but rapidly fizzles - it will be a family of cars that gets developed, so as to lead Fiat's charge to the forefront of small-car safety, engine technology and style. There will be versions with truly revolutionary powertrains for wildly impressive economy. There'll be an Abarth, a micro-estate, a cabrio. The fun's just beginning.
But first to the here and now: a car that's beautifully worked. Roberto Giolito's shape is properly modern in its surfaces, evoking a strengthened version of the original. It's modern-scale short - spare and taut, economical of road space, rather than profligate of it, like the over big yet under-accommodating Beetle. It looks expensive too, with its plump surfaces, neatly thought out cutlines and jewelled lights and door handles.
Inside, the lushness continues. Almost nothing that's visible is filched from the Fiat partsbin; it's mostly bespoke, and of a distinctly higher quality. Even the hazard flasher button is a little ruby, a red symbol embedded in a clear resin lozenge. The instrument pack is unique, a spacesaving layout that lets you read everything through the steering wheel, and leaves the rest of the dash uncluttered like the classic 500's.
It consists of four concentric circles. At the centre, you have LCD info on fuel, temperature and trip computer. Outside that, a stubby rev counter needle revolves, its centre portion obscured by that LCD panel so you see only its tip. Beyond that is the tip of the speedo needle.
Outside the speedo is a circle of warning lights. It might sound confusing, but in practice it works fine. When you're in a low gear, the speedo needle chases the tach around the dial, but in high gears, it's the speed readout that's winning the race. Goads you on, that does.
There are endless choices of trim and materials and colours. Some of them are retro, including a very fine houndstooth check or a red/cream colour scheme. Some, such as the perforated leather with panels of rucksack material, are determinedly modern. A lick of bodycolour paint runs across the dash, and the climate and stereo panels are cream or black to coordinate or contrast.
Have fun with the order form. Little Italian flags for the wings, big numbers on the bonnet, stripes, a chequered roof, extra chrome and lights - it's all there for the having, when you're in the mood to spend, spend, spend.
Mind you, we're not talking about Mini levels of spending here. Fiat insists the new car is a real Fiat, a car at populist prices. The guys from Fiat call the Mini 'elitist', and they have a point when you work out how easy it is to rack up £15,000 even on a Mini One. The 1959 Mini was expensive too. The 1957 500 wasn't.
On 4 July 1957 Fiat launched the 500. It was so basic it didn't even have a proper back seat, or rear window, Fiat wanting to prevent it from cannibalising sales from its fractionally less tiny 600. In fact, though people loved the idea of the 500, at first they didn't buy it, because it was just too basic.
Within months, Fiat cut the price and made a new 'standard version' for the original money with extra kit. (A rear seat! Hubcaps! Wind down windows! A power increase from 13 to 15bhp! Oh Mr Agnelli, how you do spoil us!) With that, a legend was born.
Launching the new car exactly half a century later, on 4 July 2007, Fiat hopes not to make the same mistake. The new 500 won't be under equipped. Neither will it really suffer too much in comparison with Fiat's other small cars, the Panda and the Punto. The 500 isn't as roomy or practical as they are, but it isn't meant to be a utility purchase to motorise a nation. It's a thing of joy.
Quite how much joy I'm about to find out. Sitting in it is an odd experience: eyes closed, all the main touch points are exactly as per my Panda 100HP Lifer - the seat holds me the same way, and it has a matching relationship to the pedals and wheel and stalks, while the six speed gearlever has that same high mounting and handily short travel.
The sound of the starter motor and keen-edged idle of the 1.4 engine are as familiar to me as my own breathing. But eyes open, it's all different, not just the dash and dials and buttons, but the more rounded, lowertopped windscreen, the view down the flanks in the mirrors and the disappearing bonnet
It moves off gracefully, thanks to an initial throttle calibration that's a lot less pointlessly aggressive than in my Panda. At town speeds the ride is more pliant, it's not as supple as an Aygo or, indeed, the non-sporty Panda versions. As far as I could tell on Turin tarmac, which was a lot less shattered than the London variety, the wheels hit bumps without making the clang you expect from a car this tiny.
Accelerating or cruising at motorway speeds, it's the engine that makes the running on your ears. This is never a quiet car. But it's an engine you can live with, because it's never rough, even as it sails past 6,000 cheerfully ignoring the red line.
The rev-limiter actually lets you have 7,000 for a second while you shift up. Just as well it thrives being worked like that, because even in sixth, it's revving busily at motorway speeds.
The alternative 1.3 diesel is a little chattery and doesn't have anything like the topend vim of the petrol, but it's torquey and goes forever on a litre of fuel. The brakes deserve a mention, not just because the pedal's progressive and has access to surprisingly strong retarding force, but also because if you hit the pedal in a curve or crest, when lots of small cars would weave about a bit, the 500 carries on true.
Cornering is a laugh, a process where you feel involved, definitely not just a steer-and-go exercise. The little car scoots through bends with an appetite, despite a fair bit of roll, and throughout the arc you can trim things on the throttle.
Even though there isn't actually a whole lot of steering feel, you get a clear sense through the seat of the back and front ends working, so you can load up one or the other to suit your purpose. It pays to turn into sharp bends progressively though, or you'll be lost in the mean streets of Understeer City.
This by the way is on the 15-inch wheels. There's an optional 16inch set, which are a less flattering, multi-spoke design and wear tyres a notch up in width and a notch down in profile. Result is more grip and precision, which suggests a decent suspension system well able to take advantage.
But the cornering is less amusingly squirmy, and the ride gets distinctly harder-edged. With this amount of power, I reckon these 16s are too much for normal roads.
In all, this car feels like a bigger thing than it is. Fair enough; it's priced like a bigger thing than it is. When it arrives here in January, it'll wear stickers maybe 10 per cent above an equivalent-engined Panda, and the real gap will be bigger, because I can't see there being any discounts.
For scooting around a city, you can really enjoy the fact it is a proper tiddler, a full half-a-metre shorter than the new generation of superminis. It doesn't quite match the cuddly proportions of the 2004 Trepiuno show car, but then this one has a real engine and meets real laws, so that's hardly surprising. Besides, it would have been an impossible demand to match exactly the proportions of the original 500, since the 1957 model has its engine in the back.
The new 500 is based on the Panda's platform, but manages an even shorter front overhang than a Panda, which is a bit of a miracle given new crash rules. Fiat had to modify the radiator and add an extra set of crush longerons to absorb impacts properly in such a short space. That's an expensive effort.
Meanwhile at the back, to match the original (ultra-cramped) 500's roofline while carving out some space for grown-ups, they had to lower the seat cushion - but even so, it's cramped enough that an average adult would be appealing to the human rights courts after more than a few miles.
'The Abarth version will have big wheels, lower suspension and yards more attitude'
One further visual trick: the original car had a strongly pyramidal look, so to give the new one the same sloping-sides stance, they widened the track compared with the Panda. That doesn't just get the desired look, though, it also helps handling and side-impact protection.
Compared with the Panda, you get a wider track, stronger anti-roll bars and a retuned suspension - firmer than the regular Panda's but thankfully a lot less jarring than the Panda 100HP's. The new and stronger crash structure means the steering is more precise, because the body it's mounted to isn't flexing so much. And yet with all this extra strength, the weight has been kept to Panda-par because the 500 is so much smaller at the top. Even the top spec 1.4 is comfortably under a tonne.
The 500 comes with three engines for now: the base 1.2 69bhp petrol, an evolved version of the sweet Panda engine, then there's that ultra efficient 1.3 turbodiesel - 111g/km of CO2 and, for the moment, the top end is the 100bhp 1.4 16valve from the Panda 100HP.
All these engines meet Euro 5 emissions, well ahead of the game. The engineers also snuck us some numbers for the Abarth version, which has a 1.4 turbo kicking out 170lb ft and 135bhp. It'll have big wheels, lower suspension and yards more attitude.
To keep it ahead of the pack, the 500 will soon get a stop/start system across the entire range, cutting town consumption by about 10 per cent. Then in 2010, there's a new engine, a really revolutionary, twin cylinder petrol that does away with an inlet camshaft altogether, the valves being precision opened by electromagnets. Expect 110bhp with CO2 under 100g/km.
Those are sound engineering reasons to be impressed by the 500. But impressed won't do. This car demands love, and it gets that for other reasons.
For the folk memories - of Dante Giacosa and his diligent young engineers putting their nation on wheels from a vast drawing office in Turin; of evenings outside the gelataria, long black hair, headscarves and a flash of dark eyes; of rural grandmothers bringing back a basket of perfect veg from the market; of ragazzi chasing through town, tyre-squeal and valve-bounce echoing off narrow Renaissance streets.
That's the context. The substance, the stuff that makes a car desirable in the 21st century, isn't just the macro-sheet metal that talks, wrapping mechanicals that fizz. It's the details, like having spot on sculpturing for your alloys, the right depth of texture on your dashboard, a set of effortlessly reconfigured instruments, pert little switches with a finger friendly click-clack and a chrome ring surround. Fiat gets all that. The 500 gets it all.
Paul Horrell
Top Gear
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