Apart from the gear lever, and some updates of the multimedia system, the five hundred’s inside hasn’t actually been touched since its main facelift in 2015.
In some methods, it nonetheless strikes you as fairly a neat little bit of packaging. For outright area, you do really feel fairly tightly squeezed in on the wheel by the large, rudder-like driver’s door because it closes, in entrance of a decent pedal field and a steering column with no attain adjustment in any respect. But headroom isn’t so tight; the entrance seats regulate to allow you to commerce off cushion inclination towards base peak fairly cleverly; and visibility is nice in most instructions.
The exception to that rule, within the case of the 500C cabriolet model at the very least, comes if you motor the material hood all the best way again, when it gathers up in a barely ugly bunch behind the rear seats (usable for smaller youngsters solely), and obscures an enormous chunk of the view in your rearview mirror. You additionally get a much less accessible and customarily helpful boot within the case of the 500C – so it truly is price questioning how a lot you need that tousled fringe.
The 500’s design gave engineers an even bigger problem in making room for rear passengers than these up entrance. The 1957 automobile’s roof curved in the direction of the rear to deliberately cut back area behind the entrance seats, to assist differentiate it from the four-seat 600. Even later 500s had rear seats that have been solely match for kids.
Yet at present’s automobile, which is just 3.5 metres lengthy, was designed as a full four-seater from the off; so that you sit low within the 500’s again pair of chairs, on skinny however dense padding, and each headroom and legroom are tight. Further rear, beneath a really small parcel shelf there’s a 185-litre boot.
The cabin’s materials high quality, which handed muster for a small automobile with premium intentions a decade or extra in the past, stands up much less nicely to scrutiny in 2024. This is partly as a result of Fiat discontinued the automobile’s outdated richer trim ranges. Our check automobile had darkish dashboard plastics that seemed onerous and glossy in locations, although its switchgear largely averted feeling low cost to the contact.
The Abarth fashions are a barely totally different breed and, as you would possibly anticipate, include all of the sporting pretensions anticipated from a hot-hatch-cum-track-day-special. They all include the identical 1.4-litre T-Jet turbo petrol engine, however every produce a distinct output – 143bhp, 163bhp and 178bhp for the 595, Turismo and Competizione respectively.
With the Abarth it’s clear that Fiat desires you to be in little doubt that you just’re inside an Abarth than an everyday Fiat. The normal cabin structure is similar to the traditional 500, in fact, however within the detailing it’s pure Abarth. At least, what Fiat perceives a contemporary Abarth to be, and meaning bucket seats, alloy pedals, a flat-bottomed steering wheel, a turbo increase gauge/shift indicator and a Sport button on the sprint.