Off Topic No longer in the top 10

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Off Topic No longer in the top 10

Looks like the fiat 500 has dramatically dropped completely out of the best selling top 10 cars for this year.

Surely this is evidence enough that fiat need to update the 7 nearly 8 year old design?

I'm sorry to say that, IMO, they can update the car all they want; it's never going to regain its past popularity.

Fiat had their chance with the 500; many folks who'd never have previously even considered a Fiat were buying into the obvious charisma of the car in spite of the brand, but seven years of not designing out minor but frustratingly annoying common faults, coupled with continued abysmal support from their franchised dealers mean Fiat have likely thrown away the kind of opportunity that comes only once in a generation. They could easily have used the 500 to rebuild the brand in the UK, but instead they have used it as a cash cow and treated some owners with serious problems with what can only be described as contempt.

The 1.2 500 I can buy today is actually a worse car than the 1.2 500 I bought in 2010 and introducing the 9000 mile inspection service is the final nail in the coffin. I must have read at least a dozen posts in the last two weeks from previously loyal 500 owners who will be looking elsewhere for their next car.

What is just as telling is the collapse in residuals over the past two years, though IMO they're still way too high to make a secondhand 500 a reasonable proposition. It's still a car perhaps best bought new and traded away before the warranty runs out.

There will be a lot of 500's on UK roads for many years yet; any decent independent garage prepared to invest in properly understanding how to economically fix the 500's common faults should never be short of work. Doing a better job than the franchised dealers, for less money, should not be hard. If I were younger, I might even be tempted to have a go myself.
 
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jrkitching without quoting everything you said, I think you have 100% hit the nail on the head.

Fiat dealers do appear to operate a "what do you expect it's a cheap car" attitude towards customers. While fiat uk HQ do nothing about it.

I know the new face lifted car has a new door handle, I'm guessing to attempt to fix the problem with door handle breaking... But it's taken 7 years!!! Boot wiring problems which are a simple fix costing owner hundreds of pounds at dealer prices, while no other fiat model has the same problem!

The worst thing is now the oldest 500s are reaching that problem age where rust will start to appear and big bits will need replacing and in the next couple of years we could see a big drop in second hand prices if the reliability of the older cars is found to be bad.

What I found interesting about the list of top 10 is that the majority of them are not what you would call cheap cars! The fiesta is relatively expensive in its own class, there is an Audi a couple of VW the Qashqai and the mini an across the board average would probably see most of those in the top 10 costing about £18k

Fiat want to sell their cars for more but don't seem to want to up the quality to match the price tag, the 500 used to be about £8k which no doubt helped its popularity these days the same car is more liken £12k
 
@jrkitching and @AndyRKett have pretty much nailed it IMHO. Except that you'd be mad to buy a Fiesta at list- heavy discounts to be had I understand and some absolutely bargain lease deals available, especially on the warm/hot versions.
 
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jrkitching's explanation sums up pretty much in entirety why we now no longer a 500. Having owned two, a 2011 (built 2010) 1.2 and a 2013 (built 2012) TA, we've had enough experience of some of the common faults the 500 is known to have. We escaped the boot hatch wiring issues because we got rid of both cars almost out of warranty and that issue never arose.

It's such a shame because the 500 is an eye catcher, just poorly built in my opinion in some areas and when you couple that with putting service items like pollen filters in the most ridiculously inaccessible places, then it's no wonder some of us got fed up. The door handle issues are just a poor joke :(

As for the competition out there, well obviously I'm going to big up the new i10 as we now own one in 1.2 Premium guise. Ok, as I said before, it doesn't have the cutsey looks, but for us it is a far more useable car, four doors with solidly built/attached door handles! a whisper quiet engine, very well specced with air con, cruise control, electric windows all round, decent DRL's (if you're into that sort of thing!) excellent bluetooth/hands free connectivity and what's more, it's competitivly priced. We did particularly well getting our i10 on a good discount on Hyundai's Affinity Scheme, that with a reasonable PX price on our old TA, we just had to find £4.5k to own the car outright.

Above all, our dealer experience with Hyundai was excellent, above what our Fiat dealership experience was when we bought our TA when the sales person conveniently failed to menton to me at the point of sale that our pre-reg car was in fact already 14 months old from build date. Partly my own fault for not digging deeper. I live and learn. :rolleyes:

I want to make it clear though, we thoroughly enjoyed many aspects of 500 ownership, we just couldn't face reliability issues later down the line and often, the necessary expense of having to fix stuff outside of warranty at our own expense and of course when it comes to stuff like broken door handle hinges, the car wouldn't pass its MOT, so you have to have those repaired for obvious safety reasons.
 
I'm not in the least bit surprised to see the big names in there. They have deep pockets when it comes to lease / pcp deals. Ford, VAG, BMW/Mini are soo cheap in relative terms. Of course the bubble will burst as it always does, depreciation and related over supply will see to that.

I've said it before but this is a weird forum, why keep knocking your own vehicles? It is what it is. Yes you're paying a premium for "style" / retro or what ever. You don't have to, you can get a Dacia for sub£5k.

You don't get this even on LR forum's:) quite possibly the most appalling build quality and dealer back up but at anywhere between 3 and 10 times the cost:eek:
 
I would like to see the top ten list for just private car sales, most of that top ten are company cars .
 
I've said it before but this is a weird forum, why keep knocking your own vehicles? It is what it is. Yes you're paying a premium for "style" / retro or what ever. You don't have to, you can get a Dacia for sub£5k
Well put. :)

Personally, I love our TA, and it's put the FUN back into driving. I look for an excuse to go for a drive!

No issues yet other than the SS battery, but reading this forum I'm ready for the issues as and if they arrive.

I care not a jot that the 500 has dropped down the pop charts, I still like them, so what the heck.

Regards,
Mick.
 
I've said it before but this is a weird forum, why keep knocking your own vehicles?

It's called honesty. Many folks here love both the brand and the car in spite of all the faults - I've run a 500 for almost six years now and have no plans to part with it. My Panda is perhaps the cheapest car to run, taking all costs into account, of any I've ever owned.

One of the main functions of this forum is to help folks find cost-effective ways of dealing with the known minor issues, and help them avoid buying cars with the really bad ones. Pretending the cars are perfect helps noone, and encourages both the manufacturer and the dealerships to take liberties with customers.
 
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Honesty. Umm it looks more like wining / negativity with little or no objective facts from my perspective. I see the point about making people aware of any short comings but how about feeling happy about your choice. I am.

IMHO they are no better or worse than the competition apart from the dealer network which appears poor but thankfully I've not had to deal with them yet. As a long term ownership proposition I actually think the 500 is a good idea. It's simple, lot's sold so the knowledge and parts situation is good.

I've never insinuated that the 500 is perfect, as I said in the previous reply, it is what it is.

Why moan about the "premium" price? That's life / consumerism / capitalism.

Again the 500 is what it is. How about a £3k premium for a re badged polo with an Audi badge on it (plenty of stupid people queuing up for A1's) or of course the BMW Mini, poor quality sold at a premium.

I won't have another one but that doesn't mean that I don't like them.
 
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Hmm...the original post is over-egging the 500's demise I'm afraid.

In fact, the 500 was still in the top 10 back in July (at that stage there were over 27,000 registrations, you only need to look on the SMMT website under their registration data section).

So it has only recently dropped out of the top 10, I would hazard a guess and say it is around the 16-18 mark.

Anyway, I have no massive desire to stick up for Fiat, but the 500 remains popular with so many buyers. Maybe not as popular as it was, but it hasn't died a death.
 
Honesty. Umm it looks more like wining / negativity with little or no objective facts from my perspective. .

Again the 500 is what it is. How about a £3k premium for a re badged polo with an Audi badge on it (plenty of stupid people queuing up for A1's) or of course the BMW Mini, poor quality sold at a premium..

A colleague of mine has an Audi A1, she's had it 4 years (from new) and never needed more than servicing and tyres. And having had a look round it it certainly isn't, or rather couldn't be classed as a rebadged polo.

We've had our 2012 mini for over 3 years and so far it's needed a replacement H4 head light bulb and a pair of wipers.....

Both cars are built to a far higher standard than the 500, they don't have tailgate wiring splitting and shorting out or door handles falling off, and as a result command a premium over the little Italian.


I won't have another one but that doesn't mean that I don't like them.


I've recently been driving several different cars, a couple of fiestas, Nissan Qashqai and skoda, all 2015 registered and was surprised to like all of them. However I wouldn't buy any of them. Liking your car is one thing but like without re-purchase doesn't translate into profits for fiat, which goes back to the original point of this thread.

Mean while Audi goes from strength to strength and mini have launched a new hatch, clubman, convertible and 4 door and all in the last couple of years, representing a massive investment in the brand. Investment translates into sales and investment is something fiat is improving at but still a long way behind.
 
The A1 is absolutely a re badged Polo, except in certain areas it's worse than a Polo. Ride / handling is appalling and the packaging is a joke compared to a Polo.
But Audi along with a few others are past masters at selling stuff like this at a premium. Btw I've had a few Audi's and have liked them, past tense though.

We'll never agree on your opinion of Mini's.The only thing going for them from my perspective is that they are a sweet handling fwd car, that's it.

You again give singular examples of amazing cars that have no faults. I have a 200k 20yr old T4 that apart from usual service stuff has required a new vacuum pump. And that's it in 17 yrs of ownership. What does that prove? Apart from the fact that it's been looked at pretty much zero.

If all that fails on 500's is door handles and boot wiring that's pretty good in the scale of things and certainly doesn't warrant the joy you seem to feel for it dropping out of the top 10.

If I was so dissatisfied with a car or any product I'd just sell it and move on. Merry Christmas:cry:
 
Further to my post last night, I took another look at the SMMT website to see what the stats were for Fiat for November 2015, and their like-for-like sales were down 20% compared to the previous year. The link to the zipped tables is at the bottom here.

http://www.smmt.co.uk/2015/12/new-car-registrations-return-to-growth-in-november/

Now it will be interesting to see if this is a trend or just a blip, I have no idea whether most of that is down to a drop in 500 sales, but I guess time will tell.

Nevertheless, I just think the basis of this thread is misguided though. Yes, there are several stupid issues with the 500, and Fiat CS/certain dealers are often useless. And of course there was that whole Watchdog issue as well with the 1.2!

But all of these things haven't resulted in 500 registrations tanking. Also, I can't see the point in bigging up cars like the i10 in relation to the 500. My wife simply would never choose to buy or drive one, regardless of any potential benefits, and I am reasonably sure she would not be alone.
 
Yes, I saw those figures a couple of weeks ago. Fiat sales were only down about 5% for the year to date - interestingly, Abarth sales are up 69%, and I'm guessing most of those are 500s.


I noticed I go with the trend - not! We changed our other car this year from a Renault (up 13%) Megane to a Suzuki (down 8%) SX4 S-Cross.
 
If anything the 500 is probably just reaching the end of it's life cycle, it's had a very good run there are cars out their that fulfil the dictionary definition of "car" much better but will never trouble the top ten. It's never been about being the best car it never has been, it was always a good looking car over everything else and that's why in my opinion people bought it. If that hadn't been the case the panda would outsell it as it is the better "car", but it doesn't. It will have just reached the point where everyone who wanted one had one, and there's been very little changed to encourage them into another.

Audi may be able to sell A1s, but that is entirely down to the 4 rings on the front and some time spent putting a nice interior in. Although for the money it's a joke, especially when you can get mechanically identical Seats and Skoda's up to 6 grand cheaper on list prices never mind after discount. If you can be seen without the right badge on your car obviously.

But they look nice sat in traffic, next door had a 1.4 tsi with options a cool 25k of car and the majority will never push the car hard enough to see that it's just a city car with bells on.
 
I've just seen a query from yesterday on the Honest John website from someone whose daughter had clutch failure on her Mini after 20,000 miles. The friendly Guildford Mini dealer charged £900 for an "exploration" then a further £500 for clutch replacement as it wasn't covered by the warranty. Makes Fiat dealers charging a few hundred quid for repairing hatch wiring look like Mother Theresa!
 
Agreed, I too think that it is probably reaching the end of its life cycle. I would reasonably expect it to carry on in its current form for as long as the previous KA did but a 10 year run for any modern build car in an almost unchanged guise is stretching it.

I remember, when we bought our first 500, the 1.2 back in 2011, we were chuffed to bits with it, got it at a blinder of a discount too from an authorised Fiat reseller now very sadly out of business. What made it more special too, was the fact that on our estate, virtually no one had one, most likely because they weren't exactly cheap for a small car. When we PX'ed it for the TA in 2013, there were a few dotted up and down the street. Now, end of 2015, I can count at least 10 of them within three streets of me.

I found Super Uwe's comments about the i10 a little surprising. At the end of the day, the latest incarnation of the i10 has been voted best city car of the year by some of the popular motoring press and lots of people are buying them. There is a reason for that, it offers a decent 5 year warranty period, quality build and lots of kit at an affordable price. Plus, it's actually pretty decent to drive and imho, is a better car than the 500 and I think I'm actually more than qualified to make that statement considering I've actually owned two 500's with different power plants. Apologies if that's a little galling for some, but I'm just being honest.
 
Frupi, sorry but you have missed my point. Am not questioning your judgement about the i10, if you say it is a better car then I believe you.

However, I do not believe there are genuinely that many people who will be tossing up whether to buy a 500 or an i10. They are by and large separate markets, despite them both being city cars. By all means, the i10 may well be eating into the Panda's share of the market, but not the 500 for me.

As I said in my last post, Fiat had a big drop in sales overall last month. It might just be a bad month, or maybe it is down to people turning away from the brand. Possibly it could be down to the facelifted 500 not floating people's boats? Who knows.

But the fact remains that the 500 has still been selling well this year overall, which is why I question how much people really care about dodgy door handles and boot wiring...
 
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