John R Smith
Member
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
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
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 
