Day 1 with an Abarth 500

May 15, 2009 in Automotive

It’s arrived.

The day to pick up my shiny new Abarth 500 (it really doesn’t say Fiat anywhere in the car). Rather than rack up the options list, it’s flat white with the normal red stripes, split rear seat and a fixed glass roof. It would have also had 17″ “petal” style alloys, but a snafu in making the decision to change too late meant it never happened.

And it looked great the first time I saw it. In a crazy move, I hadn’t test driven it before, partly because with modern cars there just aren’t any deal-breaking flaws any more, partly because all the reviews were so overwhelmingly positive (and I read them all), and partly because I wanted it to really feel like a new experience when it was actually mine. It didn’t dissapoint. Tucked around the back of Fiat Marylebone, it had all the cuteness of the Fiat 500, but with all the chunky detailing of a mini racer, just tetering on that edge of “cool” before it falls into “over the top Max Power chav puller”.

It all felt solid and screwed together – no creaks, crashes or bumps (more than can be said for my dear Smart Roadster), and everything you touch feels like quality, which reminds me of my BMW Mini bugbear. So much time has been spent of the Mini interior, there’s no doubt that it looks quirky, works well and is true quality. And then you reach for the door pull, and in every mini I’ve sat in, it’s cheap plastic with a rough seam. Huh?

After being frustrated at not getting the 17″ wheels I wanted, the standard 16″ rims don’t look cheap by any means, and the ride on them is firm and maybe bobbly on forever-chewed-up city streets, but never feels like it’s crashing into potholes or rattling the dashboard. It was surprisingly quiet too – not what I expected, although the exhaust does make a lovely burble on tick-over.

In the rush hour traffic, I barely got out of second gear, it was easy to drive although the clutch is re-assuringly hefty – although that could just be years of driving a semi-auto – and fun was had trying out the sport mode button.

The button feels less like it turns on superpowers when you hit it, and more like it restricts the car when you take it off. The steering goes super-light, the torque drops appreciably even for a layman like me, and most noticable is the “change-up” light, which suddenly blinks at you all the time as it tries to teach you to drive economically rather than on the red-line.

The change light brings up one interesting story. It’s in the centre of the turbo boost gauge unit, which on the right-hand drive UK model it sits high on the dashboard in a slightly distracting fashion (very distracting if sport mode is off). Back when I first looked at the Abarth, I noticed that all the videos and images of the LHD cars had it in a much more reasonable place at the four o’clock position on the side of the speedo.

Querying it with the salesman, he said that no-one was sure why it was different, but the confident rumour was that it was because the lead on the back of the unit wasn’t long enough to reach all the way across on the RHD model… And the thought that rather than just add a longer lead, they re-engineered the dashboard to put it in a crazy position makes me smile that it is still a very Italian car!

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