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500 Newbie from New Zealand

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500 Newbie from New Zealand

K

KiwiPop

New member
Joined
Jul 28, 2013
Messages
28
Points
7
Location
Petone, Wellington
Hi

I'm Warren from New Zealand. We don't currently have a Fiat, but will soon (hopefully) have a volare blue 1.2 Pop. I used to have a very rusty very faded red 850 sport which had a habit of vibrating the linkage off the carburettor and my dad had a light blue suicide door 500 that he drove to work every day when I was younger. My older brother had a similar yellow one for a few years. We also had five classic 500's as wedding cars. Some of you may have seen the book "Bambina - The Fiat 500 in New Zealand" by Todd Niall. One of our wedding photo's appears on page 63 of that book.

February this year was our 25th wedding anniversary and we decided we would buy a new 500 to celebrate. We also decided it should be light blue. Unfortunately our timing wasn't good and coincided with a change of importer, so we have had a couple of false starts and have had to change our spec a bit. We were originally getting a manual twinair lounge, but the new importers are now only doing twinairs as dual logic cabrio's which is not what we want. All 1.4's are sport spec and the colours and spec are not really what we are after, so we have ordered a volare 1.2 pop and optioned it up with a sunroof and alloy wheels. As we have only actually driven a 1.4 and a twinair, the 1.2 is a bit of an unknown, but as it is mainly a town car for us should be nice and frugal.

I've been reading all the posts about the difficulty of getting cars in Australia, and the NZ cars are supplied through the same importer, so I'm a little apprehensive. One thing that is puzzling me at the moment is that we have been told our car is scheduled for production in week 33 which seems to me to coincide with the factory shutdown. I'm assuming that the weeks are counted from Jan 1, but maybe Fiat count them differently. We have planned a (belated) anniversary celebration for late October and it would be nice to have the car here for that, so hopefully.........
 
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Hi Warren,

I suspect you've missed all the FIATs between 'ancient' and 'modern', which is a common problem in NZ and Australia :) In 30 years there's been a big improvement in solidity and safety. Rusting is no longer a problem for our environment (the Tipo of 1989 dealt with that problem and they have survived better than other cars of the same age). Fortunately, the Tipo was also the last model to use a carburettor. More recent FIATs come with ABS and a full complement of airbags, you get a nice rigid bodyshell, and models like my Stilo introduced stability control, CAN bus integration etc. years before other cars had it.

I had a 500 Dualogic 1.4 Sport (2010) last year and I rather wished I'd bought a less-common 1.2 (like I had rented in England) instead. The Sport spec didn't have the retro touches that I was expecting, like the glass roof, white steering wheel, chrome trim, etc. The 1.4 is a feisty little thing, not what you'd call fast relative to other cars you could buy, but thrives on revs and fuel economy suffers accordingly (an average of 7L/100km is not that good for a small car). The 1.2 is a more relaxed drive, feels more torquey (tractable) at low speeds than the 1.4, and the 5-speed manual has a really nice, easy gearchange (the six speed is more notchy which is one reason I preferred the Dualogic - that worked well for me).

The 1.2 500 is an easy car to drive and has excellent fuel economy. I had no problem getting under 6L/100km. Of course, the tradeoff is less performance at the top end than the 1.4. It goes plenty fast enough on a motorway and is smooth as silk, but a Napier-Taupo trip (for example) is going to work it hard. Thing is, the ride and handling of the 500 is also going to be hard work on roads like that one anyway. So what I'm saying is that the 1.2 suits the 500 better than the 1.4 (in my opinion). You get the advantage of economy and smoothness, particularly as we don't have any of the other small-engine FIATs in NZ (Panda, Idea, etc.) which would be cheaper than the 500 if they were available. The 500 is the only model FIAT currently sell in NZ, so it has to offer the best small-car experience.

As for availability - can't comment on that, but a new dealership has opened in Hamilton now that FIAT is shared with Chrysler. It would be hard for things to be any worse than they were under Ateco, so I expect the teething problems with availability will work themselves out. Getting the options you want will be worth the wait, and the new lower price is definitely appealing. My 500 was very expensive for what it was (I bought second-hand because the new price had been over $30,000!) and I sold it for more than you'll be paying new. I then bought a Stilo for less than a quarter of the price and that's serving me well, being much bigger, more fully-featured, and having more performance. It's not a 500, though. Everyone sees it as "just a car", whereas everyone loved my 500. :)

-Alex
 
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Hi KiwiPop from a fellow Wellingtonian. I have a 1.4 Lounge (Dualogic) and find it just makes you :) ! Many pedestrians and other drivers do the same. My wife had early 500s growing up (including 1 or 2 under the house for spares ;). Got ours from the main Wellington dealer in 2010 (PM me for any contact details) and have had no problems. They even replaced the dreaded top strut mounts outside warranty and fitted the proper caps (y). Have had them fit a few bits and pieces, but I'm now able to get my local mechanic to do stuff (he's just as good but cheaper :cool:).

Good luck with the order - we weren't able to do that when we ordered - had to take pot luck - but we actually got pretty close to what we wanted (check my sig).

Big J
 
Hi Big J

We are purchasing through Gazley's in Wellington. I think our timing has just been unfortunate because we had a confirmed order in February for a blue twinair lounge, but then the factory cancelled the order because it was placed through the old importer, for delivery after the change to the new importer.

Warren
 
That's a bummer huh (n). Jeff at Gazley has sold Fiats for years and been good to us and I've given him a few sources for aftermarket stuff (other than "official" Fiat that is). As dealers go, they're better than many......

Hope the wait isn't too long. Post some photos when it gets here. Happy lurking in the meantime.
 
We're starting to make some progress with our order now. It is built and on a ship heading our way. Unfortunately we haven't ended up with a sunroof - not an option on a pop for New Zealand apparently, despite initially being accepted as part of our order. A significant cost saving and something less to go wrong I guess.

So we end up with a Volare blue 1.2 pop with 15" 18 spoke alloys. Ivory Ambience interior plus the "standard" options added for our market - leather steering wheel with controls, blue and me, standard air conditioning and rear seat headrests. That last item was a surprize to me. I noticed a question about fitting headrests to non split seats a week or so ago and the response that they were required for the Australian market. The option code is 182 according to the spec built list.

We've got one of our boys tracking the progress of the 'Heroic Leader' (that's the name of the ship, not the car) on it's journey. It's currently on its way to Portugal I believe. I'm guessing there's a bunch of 500's on board for other Aussies and Kiwis as well.
 
We finally picked up our car today
smile.gif
. Ordered on 9 February, so that's 294 days - is that a new record? So far we are very happy with it. We really like the colour (Volare) which is a relief because we had not actually seen it except on the internet. It may be the only one that colour in NZ - does anyone know of another? We are also pretty happy with the 1.2 motor so far - we had actually only driven a 1.4 and a twinair. It's going to be a town car mostly, so should be nice an economical.
 
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