My girlfriend needs a new car (luckily her old Corolla's :yuck: falling apart), and I'm trying to persuade her to get one of these luvverly cars. So far I've only seen them advertised on the fiat.it page (also seen a few "used" ones on mobile.de). Is there any country closer to Norway (as we'd need to import one) that sells them?

This probably won't be of much help, but the only other country I've seen so far that has demo 500's on the road is France.

And I don't think that any customer orders have been delivered yet; according to one forum post I saw, customer deliveries start next month with the 1.4 petrol models.

Italy France germany
Some dealers discounting up to 20%

It's available in Italy now, in Germany very soon, in France from this weekend, in Belgium from 'later this year' tho some have arrived already according to
www.fiatclubbelgio.be
The Swiss expect to get them in September, they are not expected to arrive in Poland and Russia til 2008 see 500club.ru (some of its members seem to be multilingual). Available in the UK approx 1 Feb 08 we hope.

All this depends on things going according to plan, and at the moment the workers at Tychy in Poland seem a bit miffed at the prices being asked for the 500 which they regard as just a 'reskinned Panda' and they are allegededly threatening to strike and are asking for a wage increase of almost 100%!
http://www.nouvelle-fiat500.fr/forum/topic107.html

Poland, Hungary, Russia: these are among the countries thought most likely to get the 500 at 'lower prices'. The Polish don't go for the 'perceived quality' marketing blurb which Fiat are using to justify fairly high prices for the 500. The same factory in Tychy will produce the Ford Ka in late 2008 with many of the same components as the 500, but the Ford will no doubt be more basic, and much cheaper!

We have been told that they will be available here in Denmark from January 08, so Norway might be around the same time?

I am wondering whether I should replace my Grande Punto Sporting with an Abarth 500, argh all these worries ;-)

Ring Pewsham Garages Chippenham 01249 654429
advertise one for sale. ring them and see what cock and bull story they give you. depends who you speak to as to the excuse they give for not really having one for sale. Misleading advertising i think so anyway. Anybody else agre.

They havent really got one for sale. its all a big fib. tut tut.

http://atsearch.autotrader.co.uk/ww...ecords=200&modelexact=1&photo=1&hassearched=Y

Ms_Cinq said:

Ring Pewsham Garages Chippenham 01249 654429
advertise one for sale. ring them and see what cock and bull story they give you. depends who you speak to as to the excuse they give for not really having one for sale. Misleading advertising i think so anyway. Anybody else agre.

They havent really got one for sale. its all a big fib. tut tut.

http://atsearch.autotrader.co.uk/ww...ecords=200&modelexact=1&photo=1&hassearched=Y

Click to expand...

fiat have sold the 1st 25k off the production line motoring aficionado's say it could the next small car after the mini when it was launched to have a waiting list its that popular.should be pretty scarce on the road for the 1st 6mths after its launch.better waiting 6months then you may get a dicount.i got a grande punto multijet sporting when it 1st came here last May one of the 1st on the road had no chance of a discount they where tht scarce.now you can get £1600 of them the price you pay for getting a new model at its launch date

The photos being used for the autotrader advert I have seen, are photos which seem to have been taken from the omniauto.it website
http://www.omniauto.it/foto/5996/fiat-500-in-concessionaria

I don't know of any 500 actually in the UK at the moment, and I would take any such advert from anyone saying they actually have one in stock with a large pinch of salt!

The prices being asked by importers/dealers for these LHD 500s seem to be well above list price, and by the time you come to sell it, with the RHD versions available in the UK by then, you will have to sell it at a big discount.

They are asking 10k for an 8k car :-(

I think it would be madness to import one of these early, as big as the appeal is now, it's not TOO far off from the UK launch, so you'll have a LHD car that's lost a load of money six months down the line.

NF500 said:

I think it would be madness to import one of these early, as big as the appeal is now, it's not TOO far off from the UK launch, so you'll have a LHD car that's lost a load of money six months down the line.

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yeah its madness to buy a left hooker 500.in the past IE the beetle and TT loads of people wanted one and imported them just so they could have them 6 months before the uk launch.then after 6months of the UK launch the left hand hand drives had depreciated immensely and not at all desireable to own the owners where stuck with them because of the vast amount of money they would lose.as for servicing a fiat 500 here in the uk.thats an entirely different can of worms opened

Thankx for advice. I can wait til next year and its reminded me y I said I would never buy owt from a fiat dealer again. Load of &%$£"*s locally

I am in luv with the 500 as I enjoyed and miss my 1990s Cinq sooooooo much, but this 500 will prob be nothing like it to ride in and it still looks like its gonna be overpiced.

I Might even find something better than 500 has been launched by Spring 08.

They are still available at a small discount on the continent via AUTO IES and others, and only 3 weeks after launch, and French/Italian dealers who couldn’t be bothered to reply to my enquiry when I wanted to buy/import a LHD vehicle are now keen to try and sell me one, offering to beat any other deal, promising a pack of freebies, in some cases immediate delivery.

I'm going to wait for the RHD version to come out, let's hope they offer them at a discount in the UK so quickly after their launch.

Just returned from Italy (3 days ago). Despite the car being lunched on the 4th July in Italy I didn't see any on the road although plenty on transporters. Managed to find one at a dealers and blagged a test drive of about 15 minutes. Gourgeous little thing, black with the 1.4 engine. Very nippy both in a straight line and through the few twisties I could find in the time. Very nice inside with cream fabric seats and tan leather side bolsters. Black dash with piano black insert all the way across (through the climate controls). I don't think they will be availlable in the U.K. until spriing '08. The dealer had run out of catalogues. What was very interesting though was the brochure I picked up for the Lancia Ypsilon(similar size) was the new Momo Design model. Not only is it availlable with the 90hp version of the 1.3MJT engine, but also a 105hp version of the same motor. So far FIAT are only talking about the 70hp version of that engine appearing in the 500, but I'm wondering if the 105 will be part of the Abarth range. Only time will tell.

The entire 2007 production run of 57,000 units sold out in the first 2 weeks on sale. Fiat are trying to find ways of increasing production by a further 10,000 but I think it'll be a VERY LONG TIME before anyone sees one of the new 500s sold at a discount.

Ralf S.