"Fiat 500L: The Rich Inner Life of a Gutless Clown Car"
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The "North American Fiat 500L delivers excellent performance and great driving pleasure," this person perjured blandly. "These enviable characteristics are made even more interesting by typical European handling and precise, responsive steering."
Hmm, not so much. Actually, the 500L (front-drive, five-door liftback) corners like the world's smallest '65 Pontiac Bonneville. At engine speeds below 2,250 rpm, there is no one home torque-wise. You hit the gas and time stands still, a la "The Matrix." And the six-speed manual gearbox is the vaguest, wobbliest such mechanism I've encountered since I was winning dance contests in my three-piece suit. This thing isn't a transmission. It is an intermission... read more
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| Fiat 500L |
She's not much to drive—mille scusi, anonymous press official—but she's awfully easy to live with. Mom always said, that's what counts.
(via WSJ)
6 comments:
I read that review earlier this morning and could only marvel at its awesomeness.
World's smallest '65 Bonneville - that might not mean much to kids these days, but "barge on wheels" is an apt reference point.
On the other hand, I'm not sure the writer's aesthetic judgment is worthy of notice - he or she seems to think that the Nissan Cube is "cute", as opposed to, say, a non-Euclidean horror of squamous disproportion, the Yog-Shuggoth of MPVs.
The car is ugly as the java-loaded site with its pathetic pleas SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUB SCRIBE SUB SKRYBE SUBSKRRRRIIIIIIIIIIBBE11 11 111 1!!1!1111
I hate Fiats.
I once owned a Fiat. Which is why I hate Fiats.
My Fiat story.
During the 1970s a few of my friends had Fiats. The Fiat 124 Spider looked good and handled well, but still junk underneath that. The rest were just junk.
There's a reason Fiat left the U.S. market back then. No one was buying them because Fiats were junk. Looks like they never learned this.
You have my deepest sympathy, HazMan, and I admire your courage for making such an admission, publicly even.
I had a classmate whose BiL bought a Fiat. It failed spectacularly when it was still new. I learned from their mistake.
The author of the site http://www.autoextremist.com/ writes frequently about the train wreck that Fiat/Chrysler is. Some things never change.
Purchase a Fiat today, live to regret it tomorrow. If you are lucky.
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