Thanks Samuel, I found your posts and the article very interesting and informative. I agree it sounds appealing. I've been hoping they would announce an automatic version but the article seems to hint that they won't. They are still offering the 1.2 Dualogic for now but I'm guessing WLTP will kill that off too sooner or later.

Hard to predict the future of the auto, richie17. I was surprised at the 90% manual gearbox sales figure. Sounds high to me.

Maybe that’s because A-segment cars may be called city cars – and the unimaginative journalists who review them act like they can barely reach the national speed limit – but that’s not where all of them are driven. Far from it. Here in France they’re very popular in rural areas with less money to waste on cars and fuel and servicing, less concern for status, and narrower roads. These people probably buy near 100% manual because they don’t drive in traffic.

I live in Paris but barely use a car in the city. And yet I have a “city car” to escape to the countryside. My fiancée and I even use it to blat across Europe to Romania, where she’s from. Car reviewers would be horrified to hear we do 1800 km in two days in a Citroën C1 … each way.

Let’s try that link again:

https://www.ukimediaevents.com/publication/0f5c83a9/10

It’s page 8, “Urban planning”, if the link doesn’t take you to it directly.

Samuel D said:

There won’t be a lot of torque at any speed compared to bigger or turbocharged engines

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That is exactly the problem, because this engine replaces the TwinAir (TA), which was turbocharged.

Samuel D said:

I have a Citroën C1 and think three-cylinder naturally aspirated petrol engines are brilliant.

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Well that explains a lot. In 2014 I made a testdrive in a C1 with 1.0 engine. What a disappointment! Compared with a 500 with TwinAir such a C1 is simply under-powered, no, unpowered.

Samuel D said:

... will make this a very efficient Fiat 500 in the real world – probably a lot more efficient than earlier models.

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Who cares if it isn't as much fun to drive as ones previous FIAT 500?

AGH1965 said:

Who cares if it isn't as much fun to drive as ones previous FIAT 500?

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Plenty of people. Many people just want a car, not a specific engine.

Others, like me, want best efficiency, either for lower running costs or environmental reasons or both. The new engine is more efficient than the TwinAir, so it’s better for these people.

And a few others, including me, don’t agree with the assumption you (and car reviewers) make: that more power necessarily makes a car more fun to drive. For me, almost all cars are grossly overpowered for driving on real-world roads. That makes the driving experience boring: just point and squirt. I take pleasure in getting the most out of a small car with a small engine. Maybe you need to rev it to 5000 RPM sometimes to join a motorway in front of a lorry. Or change down not one but two gears to pass a bus. So what? It’s fun. Three-cylinder engines are great at high revs. They spin freely and get smoother as the revs climb. They breathe easily because of complementary effects (arising from the 120-degree stroke separation) in the intake and exhaust manifolds. Notice that this new FireFly engine hits max power at 6000 RPM even though it has a long stroke and only two valves. There are good technical reasons behind the popularity of three-cylinder engines in recent years. Everyone from Dacia to BMW uses this architecture now.

But of course the discontinuation of the TwinAir is a loss for some people like you. That’s a pity but nothing lasts forever.

Samuel D said:

And a few others, including me, don’t agree with the assumption you (and car reviewers) make: that more power necessarily makes a car more fun to drive.

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Personally I don't care about power figures at all, but high torque at low revs is simply fun to drive. Once you have experienced that, then switching to the torque of a small naturally aspirating engine is as exchanging your car for a Roman chariot.

High torque at low revs (which only matters because it means high power at low revs; it’s power, not torque, that makes a car go) is easy to drive. Just push the pedal for more power. Point and squirt.

That’s comfortable, but is it fun? Not always. Sports cars like the Mazda MX-5 still have naturally aspirated engines because enthusiasts like the instant and predictable throttle response (no turbo lag) and the engagement of having to change gears to extract maximum performance.

In any case, at low revs the electric assist of the new Fiat 500 Hybrid will have a big effect. For example, perhaps the engine has a maximum power (full throttle) of 20 horsepower at 1800 RPM. (That’s probably close to reality.) Adding 5 horsepower of electric assist therefore represents a 25% improvement (not 20% as I stated earlier) at 1800 RPM. That will be very noticeable.

Samuel D, you contradict yourself. You dislike high power at low revs because you don't find that fun to drive, but you glorify an increase from 20 to 25 hp at 1800 rpm. If you don't like high power at low revs, then you should hate the additional 5 hp! By the way, a TwinAir has 39 hp at 1900 rpm.

I’m not glorifying a 25% power increase at typical city-driving revs, just saying it will make a difference to how the car can be driven (less down-shifting needed).

A TwinAir is still more comfortable, I don’t deny. Although with different gear ratios, the power at the same RPM should not be directly compared (the TwinAir will typically operate at lower RPM).

With Euro 6d / WLTP / RDE arriving, plus the 95 g/km CO2 limit under the new test cycle, and Fiat’s move to a new modular engine architecture (FCA Global Small Engine), the TwinAir could not survive. Did you think it would last forever? It was in production for a decade.

The VW Up no longer has a turbocharged option either. That car weighs more, has only 59 horsepower, no electric assist, and higher emissions on the WLTP cycle.

The Citroën C1 / Peugeot 108 no longer has the PSA 1.2-litre engine choice, just the 1.0-litre Toyota that you didn’t like.

Etc.

Fiat looks pretty good by comparison.