Category: City Cars 
Price Range: £8,100 to £10,900
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 previous Fiat 500 had rear seats really suitable only for children. The new one is intended to be a proper four-seater, which posed a packaging problem for Fiat. Mounting the rear seat low and upholstering it with thin but dense foam are two of the solutions, but anyone of average height or more will find his/her head very close to the rear pillars. It's the price you pay for the look. Legroom is adequate, though, and there's a usable boot beneath one of the slenderest rear shelves in existence. Front space, by contrast, is ample under the domed roof. There's plenty of storage space, too, but most of it is open to view.
On the move, the 500 is quiet and resonance-free for a small car, and it rides well - better on the smaller wheels, inevitably. The impression of comfort is heightened if you order one of the various leather options, part of a big choice of interior trims including contrasting vinyl and fabric panels (very 1950s) and variations on horizontal and vertical fluting.
You can also pick coloured brake calipers, retro-look hub caps on the steel-wheeled Pop models, a glass roof either openable or not, a perfumed air diffuser and much more. All have electric windows and central locking with deadlocks, and all but Pop models have air conditioning. A sequential-shift, semi-automatic Dualogic transmission will be available with the two petrol engines. All 500s have a CD player with MP3 capability. Options here include an iPod and mobile phone interface, and Fiat's Blue&Me USB interface. Times change; the owner of an original 500 was lucky to have a radio.
And here's a lovely touch. One of the many accessories is a tailored car cover printed with a larger-than-life image of an original 500 in red. Use this, and your 500 can metamorphose from old to new every day.
