I'd love a little commuter for a 90 mile one way commute twice a week to the airport. I have sorta lusted after one of these for a while- there's one with 74k on it locally for 10.5. I'd rather rock this than a full size truck getting through San Francisco.
How bad can they really be, reliability-wise? I assume decent mpg? Parts easy-ish to come by? Repairs moderately easy to diy?
See if you find the highway manners comfortable.
A couple of GRMers have (or had) one. Seems like a fun runabout. If I weren't already eyeball deep into the R53 MINI world, I'd consider one.
I'd rock a Civic Si before a Fiat Abarth.
I crossshopped one with a Mini. The majority of my driving is all expressway. I went with the Mini. The mileage difference wasn't huge....but the comfort and quality of ride while doing tens of thousands of miles a year, was a no brainer.
The Fiat would have been more in contention, if I did say 20-30 miles a day with scant expressway and mostly surface streets. The Fiat just doesn't hold a candle to the Mini in terms of interior comfort, ride quality and such when you're racking mileage on expressways. At least from what I found on extended test drives of both.
I didn't plan on liking my MINI as much as I have, but I've grown to love the thing.
I test drove a 500 Abarth around ~2016 to replace my EP3 Civic Si (2005 hatchback). The Fiat sounded fast/loud, but the butt dyno felt pretty similar to my Civic. The driving position didn't feel right for me (I'm ~6'2"). I don't have any experience on reliability, etc.
Fiat was literally paying people to test drive their cars at the time...I think I got a gift card for $75 or $100 in the mail a week or two later. The only Abarth they had in stock was a used one at 70k miles. They also had a few cabriolet cars that were the prior model year stickered at $28k they were trying to unload for drastically less.
I like the driving position. I don't like how loud they are.
DIYable... we just had one in here last week, needed a front control arm. Arm bolt access is caged by a support to the front bumper. Bumper cover must be removed to remove support. Bumper cover is held in with rivets, not screws or pushclips.
The cars were very much designed to be disposed of rather than serviced.
I owned one. Absolute hoot to drive and I commuted about 1.5 to 2 hours each way every day so plenty of time in the seat. But it went all Fiat on me and ended up in the shop more often than anything new should have to and I cut my losses on it.
In reply to JThw8 :
I'm commuting that much in my Civic Si. It is really good for that task and still fun to drive.
Owned a 2013 for 7 years, had 77K miles on it when I sold it. Replaced both front axles and and something else, driver window regulator broke just before I sold it. Other than that? Many trips to Tail of the Dragon, track days, lots of autocross. I regretted nothing. Only sold it to try other platforms while still healthy enough to. I loved mine, and met many at Fiat's on the Dragon that did also.
Plenty of aftermarket fun stuffs now, not so much in 2014. My axle issues could have been the coil overs I bought with 60K miles on them and didn't realize that was an issue (lesson learned). I could drive to/from work all week on a tank of gas (26 miles each way). Added a UniChip and pedal box, short shifter adapter, I loved that thing.
I also like the driving position, but didn't care much for the driving experience, and found it very underwhelming.
I drove an hour there and back in a Sonic 1.4T and preferred it. By a lot
Despite that, I like the looks of them so much if I found the right deal I'd probably give it a second chance and go for another test drive.
David S. Wallens said:See if you find the highway manners comfortable.
These are my questions dude. I mean, this is an added question, dude.
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