Fiat's new lease deal for the 500 is young at heart

FIAT is pitching a new lease deal on its 500 to teenage motorists who would otherwise struggle with the cost of insuring their first car.

The company’s i-DEAL scheme, agreed jointly between the Italian manufacturer and Carrot, an insurance firm, allows drivers as young as 18 to drive a brand new 500 fitted with a telematics system which encourages them to drive more safely.

The three year deal costs £239 a month to take part in. While it’s not the cheapest way to get motoring at the age of 18 – there are of course, telematic monitoring systems which can already be fitted to secondhand cars – it’s ideal for parents who want their offspring to start their motoring career in a safe, hassle-free way.

Karl Howkins, Commercial Director for FIAT Chrysler UK, said: “This all-inclusive insurance package deal will make the dream of driving a brand new FIAT 500 a reality for many young drivers who would otherwise be forced to drive an older and potentially less reliable and safe vehicle.”

To find out more go to the new website covering the Fiat 500 insurance deal.

Car makers should resist the urge to do cover versions of their classic hits

A MATE of mine put it to me the other week that the Volkswagen Type 2 – known to surfers, hippies and holidaymakers everywhere as simply the Campervan – is the most depicted car of all time.

Just about every bit of tourist tat imaginable, from teatowels and tee-shirts to pint glasses and USB sticks has featured the rear-engined workhorse at some point in order to lend said souvenir a groovy air of free love. Everybody knows what a Type 2 looks like – even if they insist (normally incorrectly) on calling it a Volkswagen Campervan. 

It’s one of a handful of old cars that still have that cult currency no matter where you are – and one of only two, I reckon, that haven’t been shamelessly reinvented. The Mini, the Fiat 500 and the Volkswagen Beetle have all been done. There are only a couple of names which people really remember left – so why are the car makers still at it?

Take the Maserati Ghibli, for instance. If you’re a Champion reader who’s ended up on the motoring pages because you’re looking for the Sports section but got a bit lost then chances are you won’t be able to picture a Maserati Ghibli without consulting Google – so it’s got no resonance. If, on the other hand, you pride yourself on being a petrolhead, you’ll know it’s an old Italian supercar. So you’ll feel a bit fobbed off to discover the revived version isn’t a ground-hugging missile, but a diesel-engined four-door saloon. 

The other trip down Memory Lane which I’m still yet to understand is the new Vauxhall Viva. There is, of course, much to commend about the old Viva, but do you see it on teatowels and mugs at souvenir shops in holiday resorts? Nope. I understand why it’s a revival in a name only, but unless you owned one back in the Seventies or read Practical Classics, it’s just not a name that’ll ring a bell with your mates.

Redoing your old offerings as new models is duller than hearing those breathy-voiced Eighties cover versions that always seem to pop up in John Lewis’ festive ads, or seeing the best the cinema has to offer are yet more comic character reboots. I don’t want a new Ford Cortina or a revived Vauxhall Chevette in the same way I’d dread a TV remake of Only Fools and Horses or yet another outing for Do They Know It’s Christmas.

Why hasn’t there been a new Type 2, or a new Citroёn 2CV or Ford Capri? It’s simple; the manufacturers have resisted the urge to do cover versions of their classics because they’ve got more exciting and innovative things to show you. The makers of these great cars from the past were doing them as ‘new’ to their best of their abilities – and that’s why we cherish the good ‘uns as classics decades later. I applaud the people still doing that today, resisting the urge to do cover versions of their old cars and using their imagination to come up with genuinely modern – and usually brilliant – new cars.

More of that in 2015 please!

The new Jeep that's secretly a small Fiat

GREAT THINGS happen when America and Italy get into bed together.

How else do you explain Spaghetti Westerns, deep pan pizzas and The Godfather Part II? It gets even more special as soon as cars are involved – how else do you explain the Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California – so it was probably only a matter of time before Fiat’s transatlantic tie-up with Chrysler finally came up with the goods.

That’s because the latest unbelievably rugged offering from Jeep is, if you peel away all the Action Man packaging, basically the four-wheel-drive Fiat 500X unveiled earlier this year.

In fact, it’s more than that; because it’s built around the underpinnings developed by Fiat for its small cars (the company’s imaginatively-titled ‘Small’ platform) the new Jeep Renegade is also a distant relation to the Fiat Punto, the Alfa Romeo MiTo and – by virtue of the firm’s previous infatuations with General Motors  - the Vauxhall Adam.

The fact the Jeep Renegade manages to do the motoring equivalent melting down a Barbie doll, putting it back together and flogging it on a second time as a G.I Joe action figure is all down what the car industry called platform sharing. Ever wondered why a Volkswagen Golf and a SEAT Leon feel strangely similar to drive, or why the Toyota Aygo and the Peugeot 108 have the same vigour for small, twisty roads? It’s because under the skin they’re basically the same.

In the new Renegade’s case, it’s a bit like Fiat taking two pizzas and lavishing them with radically different toppings – olives and pineapples for the Fiat 500X, and every red meat imaginable for the muscular, macho Jeep. It’s great news for the car makers because they can sell the same basic product to two completely different sets of people.

Would I ever buy a slightly bloated version of the Fiat 500 that’s then been given four-wheel-drive to remove it even further from the 1950s micro marvel it roughly apes? No. Chances are, however, that I would buy something that looks a bit like the Jeep Cherokees which were all the rage here a decade or so ago, but shrunk down to make it more manageable in a Britain where petrol costs £1.30 a litre.

After what feels like an eternity of being treated to blobbily-proportioned family hatchbacks which only vaguely resemble off-roaders, it’s great that Fiat’s small car know-how has finally given Jeep the chance to make something which actually looks the part.

Fingers crossed it’s as good off the road as it’s Fiat-developed siblings are on it.

Fiat 500 range gets freshened up

A BLINK-and-you’ll-miss-it update of the Fiat 500 range has just gone on sale across the UK.

Sensibly, Fiat has chosen not to mess with the city car’s biggest selling point – its retro styling inspired by the original Nuova 500 of the 1950s – but it has treated the range to some new technology instead, including a digital instrument display and a new version of the company’s award-winning TwinAir engine.

The updated Fiat 500, which starts at £10,600, is available to buy now.

The Fiat 500 MPW is a stretch too far

By unveiling a seven-seater version of the 500, Fiat has finally solved one of the world’s great ongoing mysteries. Finally, the question of who ate all the pies has been answered!

The 500 MPW got my automotive gag reflex going when I first clocked eyes on it a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I’ve seen it through increasingly squinty, curious eyes, trying to make sense of where it’s coming from. I’m a huge fan of the 500 and understand it’s been the biggest Italian success story since that chap finished painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel. I also understand that BMW put the MINI through the Supersize Me treatment and the bloated result, the Countryman, was a sales hit.

Naturally, the bosses in Turin have put two and two together… and ended up with seven. While I was already struggling with the recently inflated version of Fiat’s city slicker, the 500L, the new MPW really is a stretch too far. To my mind at least, it’s the ugliest automotive offering since Ford put the Scorpio out of its misery.

Which is a shame, because I’ve always had a soft spot for the 500 (and pretty much every other tiny Fiat, for that matter). In fact, a glorious hour at the helm of an Abarth 500C Essesse, enjoying the sunshine through its open roof, reveling in its handling and listening to its little four-pots sing as you headed up through the gears, is among my most treasured motoring memories. The 500 is a car whose sole reason for existence is to make being small into something fun. A seven-seater family bus it is not.

Chances are the 500L MPW will be keenly priced, comfortable, spacious and reliable, but then so is a Skoda Yeti, or a Nissan Qashqai, neither of which look like a smaller car that’s spent a month eating nothing but Melton Mowbrays. I’m also fairly confident that people, even ones with a vague sense of aesthetics, will buy it, just as they did with the MINI Countryman.

All of that I understand, but what I don’t is that someone, at the same company which gave you the beautiful Barchetta, the challenging Coupe and the chic, original reinvention of the 500 clearly looked at it and thought “Mmmm, that’s nice.”

Slightly bloated beauty, in this case, is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Prepare to fire up the... Fiat 500L

FIAT'S taken a leaf out of the fashion world's book when it came to labelling an upscaled version of its retro-styled 500.

Regulars at Topshop, Primark et all will be more than familiar with the thinking behind this new version's name - it is, quite simply, the 500L, L being for Large. Think MINI Countryman, then, but inspired by Italian chic rather than British bravado.

Behind the plus-sized outfit there's a blend of familiar Fiat technology - including the award-winning, eco-friendly TwinAir engine which has already proven a bit of a hit in the smaller 500 - and an interior which pitches the new arrival straight into mini MPV, with a higher roofline than a Vauxhall Meriva and more interior space than Volkswagen's new Golf. It's also being priced aggressively to undercut the Countryman, with £14,990 getting you either into a Pop Star or an Easy version, which are identically priced but kitted out to appeal to two very different kinds of customer.

It's got all the sensible boxes ticked and - if the smaller Panda and 500 are anything to go by - be grin-inducingly pleasant from the driver's perspective, but this sector of the market is as much about style as substance and to truly be in with a chance of stealing the march on MINI it'll have to look the part too.

That's where I worry for the 500L's chances, because to my eyes at least the new arrival looks like a 500 that's spent a few weeks gorging itself on the Melton Mowbrays. That's a criticism I'd level at the MINI Countryman too, but then a revisit to the cute lines of Italy's original people carrier, the 600 Multipla, the new Fiat is not.

This 500's extra girth means there's more to love, but the attraction, if you fell for its smaller sister, probably won't be as instant.

Fiat 500: The brilliant small car I completely forgot about

WORD reaches me from north of the border that my sister’s looking to treat herself to a festive gift of the four-wheeled variety

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It’s a straightforward enough challenge; she’s looking for something small, good looking, reliable and easy to run, for around the four grand mark. Not that she’s going to take any advice off her car nut brother – it’s Life On Cars tradition that whenever someone actually asks me for advice on cars, they listen dutifully to whatever considered opinion I can come up with, pause reflectively for a moment, and then ignore it and buy the car they had their heart set on anyway. This explains why so many people I know own a Vauxhall Corsa.

Then again, my suggestions were slightly more sensible than my sister’s other half’s, who being even more of a petrolhead than I am pointed me in the direction of a Lancia Beta Spider (Google it) which could be under your Christmas tree for just £1,650. A beautiful Italian roadster which would be fine for a classic car bore like me, but hardly the sort of thing you’d rely on to get you in and out of Glasgow on a daily basis!

Trying to keep things as sensible as possible, I went for the original Ford Ka, Toyota’s Aygo, the Citroen C1 and – whisper it softly – the new MINI, with the Peugeot 106 GTi as the wildcard I secretly hoped my sister would go for.  All of which are reliable enough to survive life tooling around a city centre for days on end, small enough to squeeze into even the tightest parking spaces and – most importantly for my sister, someone who’s far more stylish than I am – blessed with the sort of chic and sense of fun that, say, a Nissan Micra just isn’t.

I was quietly pleased with my carefully selected shortlist, right up until the point when my sister mentioned the one small car I’d forgotten about; the Fiat 500. Her argument is that it’s far cuter than just about any other small car on the second-hand market (as long as it’s bought in the right colour), it’s got perfectly good underpinnings (which is true, given it’s a former European Car of the Year), and there’s enough of them around for her to pick up a decent one. For what it’s worth, I think the mechanically identical Panda is the better small Fiat, but for what my sister wants the 500’s perfect. I’m just annoyed I didn’t think of it earlier.

To be fair, I agree with her. If you can think of a better suggestion, feel free to send them in to the usual Champion address. Although – in true Life On Cars tradition – she’ll only ignore it anyway. Merry Christmas.