Category: City Cars 
Price Range: £7,900 to £10,700
Powerful retro flavours matched with modern design, fun to drive, fabulous detailing.
Headroom is tight in the back, steering wheel not adjustable for reach, not much covered storage space.
See one, drive one and you'll want one.
The world has waited for this car like few others. And now, 50 years to the day after the launch of the diminutive, rear-engined infra-mini that mobilised Italy, the new 500 is launched. This one is based on a modified Fiat Panda platform which will also underpin the next Ford Ka, yet it keeps the same shape as its antecedent, just Xeroxed-up by 25% or so.
It is, of course, a front-wheel-drive hatchback this time around, with front-mounted engines broadly as used in the Panda: a 69bhp 1.2, the 100bhp 1.4 already seen in the Panda 100HP, and the usual Fiat 1.3-litre turbodiesel, here giving 75bhp. Future engines will be a 135bhp 1.4-litre turbo for the hot Abarth version and a 900cc turbocharged vertical twin with a balancer shaft. That version should even sound a bit like the original, whose 499cc, air-cooled engine was also a vertical twin.
The UK will get three trim levels, Pop, Sport and Lounge, to which you can add from a hefty catalogue of accessories and extras. You can make your 500 an ice-cool modern interpretation of the original or a temple to retro design; Fiat has calculated there to be 549,936 possible variations in total. Either way, you'll be unable to drive it or even see it without smiling to yourself. An estate-car version is in the future plan, likely to be called Giardinetta ('little garden') like its forbear. There'll be a convertible, too.
