Last year i sent requests to 4 seperate Abarth dealers for a brochure.Not a single one replied. I did sit in the car in the Flagship London store and found the usual problem with all Pandas/500s with the tight foot rest that you have to slot your big toe into. I did get a brochure from this dealer but i do not think it was the full brochure as it was only a couple of pages with little information.
When you think the car costs £14000 i would have expected a better response from the dealers. Compared to the Mini dealers,when i asked for the Mini brochure i had it in the post the next day,and the Mini cooper costs the same £14000.Still quick and a lot more comfortable.
Don't get me wrong i like Fiats.I have had a Cinq.Sporting and Panda 100HP but i am not convinced if the Abarth 500 is worth £14000.

No idea what you're doing wrong? When I got in touch it was all I could do to get them to leave me alone!

Admittedly that was some time ago now and I ended up being one of the very first A500 customers in the UK after what seemed like years of waiting...

If in doubt go on to the abarthisti forum and find one of the dealer liasons there - they are normally very forward and pretty quick to respond.

I do remember at the time i sent an E.mail to the Abarth head office.They said they will deal with my complaint and get a brochure out to me.That was years ago,and i am still waiting ha ha. Useless customer service.

smart examiner said:

I have had a Cinq.Sporting and Panda 100HP but i am not convinced if the Abarth 500 is worth £14000.

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It certainly is overpriced. Lop a grand or so off the price and they'd be selling a lot better. As it is an Essesse'd 500 is far to close to the Clio cup in price but not performance..

306maxi said:

It certainly is overpriced. Lop a grand or so off the price and they'd be selling a lot better.

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To be honest I don't think Fiat/Abarth are having any probs selling A500's. In fact, there was waiting lists for the bleedin' thing!! lol

Waiting list HA it's just the hype the same as it was with the MINI.
When i sold my Panda 100HP i was considering a 500 diesel,Abarth 500,Mini one, Mini cooper,but i wanted an automatic at a reasonable price.
In the end i went for a Smart diesel automatic and i love it.
I know you can get the Abarth 500C as an automatic,but do you think they will offer automatic on the saloon in the future?
My number one car for next time is the Mazda MX5 sports automatic,before i am too old for it. Oh gosh, just realised, i am too old now Ha Ha.

sikersh said:

To be honest I don't think Fiat/Abarth are having any probs selling A500's. In fact, there was waiting lists for the bleedin' thing!! lol

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Then why are there always delivery mileage ones for sale on Pistonheads, Autotrader, Ebay and dealers sites for RRP?

306maxi said:

It certainly is overpriced. Lop a grand or so off the price and they'd be selling a lot better. As it is an Essesse'd 500 is far to close to the Clio cup in price but not performance..

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Got to disagree with you here Maxi and not just for the sake of it.
If you spec up a BNW 1.4 Sport with a few items that the Abarth has i.e Interscope red calipers, rear head restraints, leather gear knob it comes out at £12,985. Another £1170 buys you an Abarth, with the lovely T Jet engine, better suspension, brakes, electronic aids, body kit etc. So it would only work if you lopped off a grand throughout the entire 500 range, which would be about right anyway.

306maxi said:

Then why are there always delivery mileage ones for sale on Pistonheads, Autotrader, Ebay and dealers sites for RRP?

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A lot are ex-demo/showroom cars, either way they sell like hot cakes

Murano16v said:

Got to disagree with you here Maxi and not just for the sake of it.
If you spec up a BNW 1.4 Sport with a few items that the Abarth has i.e Interscope red calipers, rear head restraints, leather gear knob it comes out at £12,985. Another £1170 buys you an Abarth, with the lovely T Jet engine, better suspension, brakes, electronic aids, body kit etc. So it would only work if you lopped off a grand throughout the entire 500 range, which would be about right anyway.

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Yep, my 500 1.4 Sport was nearly £13k, so an extra £1k for an Abarth was a good deal, especially with everything you get.

There is no brochure! The 1 page double sided A4 thing is it! Rubbish eh? but they still sell them, you can download PDF from the website.

Central Abarth office is only marketing, and poor marketing at that, i called them once, had no idea of their own product! As advised above, just call a good dealer that deals with abarthisti forums, I recommend Vospers in Plymouth, even though I am no where near Plymouth I found them super-helpful.

I can justify the A500's price with ease, in fact, I'd have bought one if it were close to the £20,000 mark i reckon. The kit you get as standard is top notch, there's hardly any need to tick the options boxes, it has almost everything as standard. A 500C in modest spec is still almost £3000 dearer than an A500.

As discussed in the other thread, there's more to owning a car than just how fast you can take a bend (which the A500 does pretty well anyway) and considering how this car makes you feel when you drive it, and the attention it gets, well it doesn't come much better to be quite frank! Sure a Clio might handle and stop better, but other that, why would you want to own one? Unattractive exterior and equally disappointing interior as well as other let downs. The A500 ticks all my boxes thanks! And still a 2 month waiting list shows the demand is still there almost 2 years on.

So what you're saying then is that the entire 500 range is over priced?

Personally I believe all cars are overpriced and that I should be able to buy a brace of Ferrari's every month with my disposable income but somehow I don't think that is ever likely to happen. :/

Meanwhile back in the real world the 500 is Fiat's best selling car in a very long time and despite feeling a bit overpriced it is still selling very well so maybe it is the competition underpricing to achieve the sales they desire

jimbro1000 said:

So what you're saying then is that the entire 500 range is over priced?

*snip*

Meanwhile back in the real world the 500 is Fiat's best selling car in a very long time and despite feeling a bit overpriced it is still selling very well so maybe it is the competition underpricing to achieve the sales they desire

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Well I think that's pretty much my opinion yes.

My 500 was on scrappage £8720 + a non running car which was more or less worthless, for a 1.2 Lounge with leather, nicer wheels and side rubbing strips was a pretty good offer. Would I pay full whack? Hell no!

500 is definitely overpriced, but not as much as the mini, and look how many of them you see around!

Its only worth what someone will pay for it, seems dealers don't have a lot of issues shifting them!

If it wasn't over priced it wouldn't be an aspirational object/purchase and that is part of the charm with the 500, and perhaps for the mini if your personal tastes swing that way.

BMW and Mercedes understood this but seem to have lost their way - BMW making cheaper and cheaper options while Mercedes forgot to maintain the quality of their cars. Both parties are desperately trying to increase profitability through different tactics.

The really aspirational stuff - the supercars and hypercars (I hate that term) have pretty much carte blanc to do what they like, it is really hard for them to do anything wrong and the pricing is real random number stuff, as long as it has enough zeros on the end.

With the 500 it isn't about performance, it is about style, looks and how much you want one. The Abarth is tied into the pricing structure for this - it has to be more expensive than the Fiat models it is based on regardless (almost) of any competition from other manufacturers.

The fact that the car has sold so well is testiment to how well this marketing policy works (along with how good the car is on the criteria Fiat set for themselves). You have a huge list of customers in USA that can't wait to get their hands on one and I doubt many people here really appreciate just how much of a turn around that must be - the name of Fiat has been mud there for nearly 30 years, no self respecting american automobile enthusiast would have even contemplated buying a new Fiat until the 500 came along and to a large extent the 500 was always intended to be sold there so it had to be that good.

This is quite possibly the first "world" car Fiat has ever built - until now ever single Fiat has been designed for Italians, if anyone else wanted to buy it, well thats just a bonus. The 500 is to Fiat what the Focus was to Ford - they actually sat down and thought about making the car appeal to a much larger market and a substantial part of the outcome is an immense improvement in quality control. More than a few people have complained about "faults" but in significantly un-fiat like fashion those faults have been dealt with quickly (for me at least), quietly and not at the customer's expense. This would have been unheard of 10 years ago. The dealers don't seem to be complaining either which is perhaps even more of a turnaround, especially in the UK where the Fiat franchises have been beyond terrible. They still have some improvements to make but so far it is a lot better - the abarth dealers are proving a bit of a mixed bunch though. Bauer Millet and Research Garage have both been exceptionally good to me but I've heard enough stories regarding some of the others to know that some dealers haven't got the message yet.

Its about positioning as well, in the UK the 500 is positioned at a premium, we don't get the base model with manual windows etc that the Italians do...

EsseEsse said:

Its about positioning as well, in the UK the 500 is positioned at a premium, we don't get the base model with manual windows etc that the Italians do...

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That's a really good point that I hadn't thought of. Seem to remember the abarth has the interscope stereo as standard which isn't the case everywhere else.

But manual windows? Can't believe they still exist.

doolahrock said:

That's a really good point that I hadn't thought of. Seem to remember the abarth has the interscope stereo as standard which isn't the case everywhere else.

But manual windows? Can't believe they still exist.

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Manual winders are lighter than with motors so homologation specials and hardcore performance versions of everyday cars will sometimes have manual windows.

Once you include all the gubins that go with the manual winder and compare it to the latest electronic windows there really isn't much in it weightwise. There is only the difference in cost to manufacture.

The only real way to save weight is fixed windows with polycarbonate instead of glass. Much lighter and tougher as it won't shatter but not as hard wearing and a little too flexible for everyday use on a road car.

When a model is to be sold in a given country there is a focus group that decides which options will be standard and which options will simply not be available. It isn't just cars - it is pretty much everything that is sold internationally, a classic example is car stereos - the manufacturers make a much wider range of products than we can buy off the shelf, the models we see are cherry picked to suit our market.

So if you go abroad (getting back to cars) you will find options or even standard fittings that we just can't get here. A classic example of this in the past was the fitting of 6-speed gearboxes or leather interiors to the Seicento. We couldn't get those here - plenty of people converted their cars to use a gearbox from a Punto Sporting but it required minor modifications to the gear shift mechanism. Do a bit of shopping and you can buy ready made parts to do the same job.