(G) The 500 Sport after 300 miles

Good Morning, folks.

Some more thoughts on the 1.4 16v Sport after 300 miles. This engine is surprisingly tractable – I had thought at first it would be terribly peaky, with nothing at all below 3,000 rpm, but in fact in the lower gears it is better than my old 205. It will happily trickle along in traffic in 2nd at very low speeds, and in 1st you can take your foot right off the accelerator pedal and it will just poodle forward on the flat at tick-over. Of course, this is not how it’s meant to be driven, but it makes the morning crawl to work a lot easier.

At the other end of the scale, I am now using up to 4,500 rpm and the engine feels a lot looser already and more willing. Something that is very apparent, perhaps because of the high compression ratio, is that you have to “drive” it down hills otherwise it just slows down. In that respect, like others, the 500 feels much more like a motorcycle than most cars I have owned. Uphill, it is just brilliant – you can feed the power in to accelerate between corners and control everything from the throttle in 3rd and 4th. The Abarth should be a real little belter, with a lot more oomph. On a dual carriageway, the little car will already happily cruise between 70 and 80 mph in 6th, and it is acceptably quiet at those speeds.

I wasn’t that sure about some of the clever features like ESP at first, but now I have to say that the Hill-Holder is really rather good – when you have tricky uphill start at a roundabout it makes a quick getaway a piece of cake (once you learn to trust it). I am very short, I have to have the driving seat well forward, and so the handbrake lever is rather far back for me. The disks all-round on the 1.4 are very good indeed – I had to do a near emergency stop yesterday from about 60 mph, and the car did just stop, with no drama.

The 500 was criticised for its ride and handling in the road tests, and here I have to say that there is some cause for criticism. The ride is very hard, which is OK, but it is also rather bouncy and nervous. This makes holding a line over poor surfaces rather hard work. The ultimate road-holding is I am sure going to be very good, but although the steering is nicely weighted the car does not communicate back to the driver exactly what is going on between the tyres and the road in the same way that the 205 does, for example. I would be interested to try a Pop with the 14” wheels, because the handling might actually be better (something we found on the little Ducati single motorcycles back in the 70s, where bigger tyres spoilt the handling). Certainly, I am glad I did not choose the 16” wheels.

Otherwise, everything is working well so far (and so it should be).

Best regards

John

Nice info - you're saying the same about the ride as i did after the test drives last week - leans int he corners but grips well, bobbly elsewhere - 15" wheels the best compromise i think.

good to hear youre happy with it, sounds like fun re the handling and very much like a new Panda the way you describe it. Must admit I did cinsider the 1.4 myself for a short time, but fuel economy put me off a bit, what are you getting from it now?

Fuel usage is very consistent - over three days commuting this week (some 50 miles including this morning) I have 37 mpg. Each way is a 20 minute trip of 10 miles, roughly 10 minutes in heavy traffic queues and 10 minutes of B-road whizzing each time. On a decent run it's going to easily be better than 40 mpg. Well, I'm quite happy to accept that the 1.4 will have the worst fuel consumption - this thing is faster than my old Triumph GT6 engined Spartan and I only got about 25 mpg out of that. As long as I get somewhere near 40 mpg I will be happy.

John

My 1.4 Sport is on 16's and the ride is not that bad to be honest, it is bouncy, but I suppose that add's a fun kind of element to the car The engine has started to get a little looser now since doing nearly 400 miles, never thought it could be a quick car, but I've surprised a few people on the roads I'm loving it to be honest, its a fantastic little car

Si

Si -

what sort of fuel consumption are you getting?

Hi

just to pick up on some of the stuff John posted. I too have done just over 300 miles so far in my 1.4 sport. The engine quite frankly is marvelous, it is quick and responsive and the quick shifts through the gears make it feel a bit quicker than it probably is. It is happy at whatever speed you are driving at and never feels that it is labouring at all. You also get great control and can use the throttle well in high speed bends to adjust your line.

The hill holder is fantastic, I wasn't sure how good it would be, but it does work a treat. Although for the first wee while like John I was unsure about trusting it. Brakes are great and you are right that even when braking quickly there is no drama at all.

Handling wise, I love the car, I have the standard 15" alloys as I test drove one with 16's and felt it was a bit too rough on the road. The bounce over rough surfaces is really just down to the short wheelbase I think and not too much of an issue for me personally and even over a bumpy rough back road between the house and work it feels pretty stable.

Cheers
Rik

Oh and I forgot to add the fuel consumption bit. I am getting high 30's bordering on 40 in my day to day driving and on a longer run recently mostly on motorway and dual carraigeway I was about 42-43, and wasn't hanging about either.

36.4 Mpg

Well here's my thoughts on my 1.4 Sport after 650 miles (16" wheels)

- Getting 40.1 mpg average - mainly slow A and B roads
- Echo a lot of the earlier comments
- Brakes are excellent, gearchange excellent (although a little reluctant when it is cold)
- Quite a few creaks from all around the cabin already, I have seat on lowest height setting and the seat fabric creaks against the plastic base
- I have a fixed glass roof which has a wind whistle at about 50 mph
- mp3 player with a Sandisc microSD and adapter works really well
- fiddly front seat tilt/memory is extremely annoying
- headlights are not great, will probably change the bulbs (and they seem easy to access)

Overall excellent and it gets loads of attention everywhere I take it

Yeah coming back from work last night on back roads, the headlights aren't the best. What would you consider changing them to?

Give me a shout if you decide to change them and what you found was best.

Rik

with the seat memory: do you mean when u try and put it back after tilting it, it never goes back where it should... i couldn't figure this out either??? its soo dumb!

change them to.......
http://www.fiatforum.com/500/136095-xenons.html

Nice to hear from lots of other 1.4 owners, keep it coming. I agree that the 1.4 engine is one of the strongest features of the car - it is really willing, with a great spread of power, and feels faster than it actually is in the lanes, so you can have a lot of fun without endangering your licence (or other people). Of course, part of the package is that the engine is also bloody noisy, snarling away like a miniature Ferrari, but hey - if you bought a little red car with alloys and a boy-racer stripe on the side (like me) then some snarly noises is what we want, right? Never mind the fact that I would be totally blown into the weeds by a Fiesta ST.

John

i had a guy in front of me in a fiesta st and he had this big stupid chav exhaust and he was booting it trying to get me to race, i wasn't interested because A i'm not a chav and B if i was going to race i'd wait until the abarth 500 comes out

Yes, of course we wouldn't have big stupid chav exhausts on our cars, would we chaps? Now then, let me see . . . how about the induction kit, yes that sounds good, and the Gazella exhaust, hmm looks loud, then there's the re-profiled cams, like the sound of that, and then . . .

No, no, of course we wouldn't

John