My lunchtime stroll to the post office in downtown St. Louis today was interrupted by (small) Fiat marketing event. Fiat STL had brought down a pair of 500s for passersby to examine, parked curbside with a handful of sales staff there to answer questions and point out features. They were willing to sign you up for a test drive, too, and schedule a dealer visit to do so.

Nice folks, and they were sorta-informed about the product, always nice to see. What I found most amusing were the comments from passersby. It seemed to be the case that many/most still have no idea what these are. "Oh, that's a new electric car", "Is that a Smart car?", "I heard those get 80 miles or so per charge", on and on.

Fiat USA still has some work to do, it seems. Our local "studio" didn't open until April or so, I was glad to see them here downtown on a nice sunny day helping to get the word out.

Nice story there, good to see Fiat doing their bit to promote the car.

The good thing about the 500 is it will get people talking even if they're not interested. OK, it's not great that some people think it's an electric car D), but at least they think it IS something different.

From a Fiat Group perspective, I do wonder what the strategy will be for the Chrysler Ypsilon when it goes on sale in the UK.

In the rest of Europe it's going to be a Lancia (as far as I know), but the reason I say this is because I think Chrysler might have similar difficulties in selling it here (bearing in mind that Chrysler do not exactly have a great reputation in the UK for building small cars....)

Guess they will have to get out and about and try to flog it!