As a fan of quirky cars, I’m naturally a fan of Fiat in the USA. It is true that they are objectively terrible by most American measuring sticks—least reliable, poor dealer service, not the cheapest, not the most efficient, low resale value, small and impractical for most North American uses, the brand may not last, etc. You have to want a Fiat because of its character, and willing to overlook a dictionary full of faults.
I get that--to a point. After all, people seem to love everything Italian. It’s quaint to think about tooling around in a cutesy Italian stick-shift joyful car in the sunshine on the Amalfi coast drinking espressos, and some will dare to bring a piece of that feeling home to Springfield. Looking at Fiat’s North American lineup, it’s as if being Italian must be their sole core competency. What else do they have? Design? The 500 has lost much of the “cute” factor now that its 10 years old (5 in the US), the X is the same thing with a Mini Cooper’s rear end, and the 500L looks like a drunk top hat stuffed with sausages. If Fiat were from Belgium no one would buy their cars. Not many Americans buy their cars anyways, but a few that do are named Avis, National, Hertz, and Alamo.
As I arrived at the National counter at O’hare airport and eyed the rows of Toyotas, Hyundais and Jeep Compass’ in the midsize SUV lineup in different shades of bland, I kept moving. Then I saw a red Fiat 500X and knew she was mine for the next few days. It stood out. It was not so boring.
Noteworthy, the 500X is the only Fiat available in America that is actually made in Italy. The 500 is hecho en Mexico, the 500L from the great land of Srbija, then the Miata clone from Japan. So if you want affordable and authentic Italian, this is pretty much it.
On the inside, the Fiat steering wheel both feels and looks fantastic, and the center stack and dash design benefits from the colored plastic trim that dresses up an otherwise dour black interior. U-connect is the infotainment system and it works.
Then it’s all downhill. Overall materials quality is pretty poor. The turn signal stalk snaps like a broken chicken leg in the best 1990’s Chrysler way. The center console and arm rests on the doors are covered in a deep spongy foam material that I foresee cracking, flaking, and coming off in marble sized chunks like an old Nerf football in the not-too-distant future. The front seats are supportive, but at 6’3”, no one can sit behind me in this car. The raked rear hatch cuts off the cargo capacity, which is one reason the sister Jeep Renegade may prove more practical.
The 2.4L 180hp Tigershark engine in this car buzzes like you expect from a Fiat. This is either charming or complete shit, depending on how much your romanticize everything Italian. If your glasses are only slightly rose-tinted, then in short time you’ll realize the buzzing is not unlike the buzzing from a 1993 Dodge Aries. This engine was in fact was originally designed by a Hyundai/Mitsubishi/Chrysler consortium, not Fiat. Once you realize this, the romance starts to fade, and your desire to drive the car off the end of a pier and claim insurance will grow precipitously.
The ride and handling around town are fine, although the short wheelbase and higher stance don’t do favors for this car on the highway. The absolutely mad 9 speed transmission is the single worst piece of mechanical engineering I have witnessed in a long time. The fact that Fiat & Chrysler—the two companies with the worst reliability records on two continents—are the companies championing this transmission, is tragically comic (yes, I know ZF makes it, but…) 9 speeds is 9 points of friction, 9 gear changes that involve clutches and moving parts, shifting through all gears every time you press the gas pedal, jumping from 6 to 3, then to 7, then to 9, then to 2. It is all over the map, always late to respond, always wrong, and for added joy, the shift points often lurch between gears like a 14 year old learning to drive stick in parking lot. Surely this thing will explode into shrapnel well before the Toyota you should have bought needs its first set of brake pads.
What an unfathomable piece of shit. If I got to drive the manual this review would read much different. Interestingly, I drove a Renegade, with supposedly this same powertrain, and the transmission wasn’t so terrifyingly perceptible. The 500X did have 17k miles on it—maybe it was already well worn, having completed roughly eleventy trillion shifts.
This car…is not a good car. It is quite bad. Part of me thinks this is actually a wonderful thing. We all have come to expect cars that never break, drive nice, never need maintenance, never leave you stranded on the side of the road in a strange and dangerous place. These are good things, but I can’t help but think about how much fun bad cars are. In my days I have owned a litany of cheap, bad cars…old Subaru wagons well past their expiration date, malaise GM junk, a Mazda Millenia, even a Renault Encore. Those cars broke, all the time, sometimes in bad places, and I learned, and I had stories to tell because of it. At least that adds to the fun in life a little bit, when things aren’t always so predictable. At least it’s not boring.
Unfortunately for Fiat, “buy this shit car, oh the stories you’ll tell” is a tough sales pitch.
