General Our new-ish 500S

[TP1964]

Hi, Just thought I'd introduce myself & say 'Hi' now rather than wait until I had a problem that I was seeking an answer to.


Last October my wife was in need of a newer car as her 2004 SportKA was rusting to oblivion & was expensive on fuel & tax & simply not work keeping it going, I surprised her with a visit to a Fiat dealership to look at a year old 500S, long-story-short we did a deal on a brand new 500S as we got an amazing price on an unregistered pre-facelift model which had already been spec'd with the glass roof we really wanted, it was a meant-to-be purchase.


So after lurking here for a while, my impressions of the 500 is that it's pretty much a sound cars but for a few minor problems-


-Door handle hinges can break, does the revised part still break?
-Hatch wiring can break after time causing odd electrical gremlins.
-Exhaust back boxes are prone to rusting.
-1.2 in Euro6 spec can be hit or miss (ours seems ok fortunately)


Does the above pretty much sum up a 500's known 'features'?

I was going to post a picture of the car but whatever I did the image was upside down for some reason, I tried multiple times - even rotating the image 180 deg before uploading.




Tony

 

[AndyRKett]

Welcome to the forum, I always liked the streetKA and the sport KA shame they do rust so badly because they're not bad little cars.


Fiat really do seem to have sorted rust problems of the past and the 12 year old punto I have on the drive has a perfect body without rust.

As for the exhausts obviously all exhausts rust, fiat use a double skin set up on their silencer boxes which means they can look well gone but still be perfectly useable for many years. Again the punto didn't need a new exhaust for 10 years and even the oldest of fiat 500s haven't reached that age yet. If you do lots of short journeys then it won't last as long but you still get a good life out of it.

Congratulations on the new car, it's the model I'd go for if buying one now