Gadgetory

the Fiat 500 cute stylish gutless just a little too much like the cars that clowns drive in a circus until now let's drive the 2012 Fiat 500 Abarth and check the tech hey Bart that's not an acronym it's a guys named Carlo Abarth the famous Austrian masochist who devoted much of his life to making Fiats go fast we've got seven teens on here but 16s that look like that or stock I'd pass on the tape stripe and a much more balls of your kind of a rear end with a splitter and a little wing above the glass now let's go inside you recognise this cabin cutesy and retro in its own way but not so over-the-top as a mini the concentric gauges are here speedo on the outside tack in the middle a little info display in the center there that's frustrating because you can never get it to the right brightness because it's so much brighter at night then the gauges around it this is new over here the turbo gauge because the a Barth has a turbo yes it actually does get that much boost apparently up to 18 even 20 psi this would be your only head unit there's not a lot of tech here as you can see but the basic sources now hooking up your iOS device here in the glove box will give you a nice very simple connection to the dash it doesn't give you a lot of interface to work with because we've got a real limited display now you may notice right above there I've got what appears to be a clip-on TomTom unit it's actually a factory TomTom unit that goes into this little port here on the dash and after I figured out the world's most convoluted pairing where this has to pair to the head unit my phone had to pair to the TomTom and there's probably one more loop here I missed you get this a car menu it's actually quite valuable alongside navigation under this you'll find Eco Drive this will show you live whether you're driving greenly or in this cars case not so greenly you've also got the ability to drop in to this area here where you've got your phone in a much more graphical interface than on that ribbon display and finally if you head over here you're going to find your media player again that is the wired player that is in the glove box not bluetooth streaming down here is your one choice only gearbox 5-speed manual no automatic yet there's an expectation the a barth will get an automatic for broader market appeal but so far they're doing it right it's a small thing but this whole array of buttons annoyed me first of all the sport mode button wouldn't you invest in an LED so it lights up when you press it and when I push this thing all the buttons move that's not good quality locking the doors there's nothing up on the top here you just push the door lever in to lock out to open last time we drove at 500 it was a C that means it had that retractable pleated cloth top very cool this car doesn't come with that not possible on an Abarth but you do have an optional glass moonroof this guy's 850 bucks additional the frustration is that's as closed as it gets with a mesh thing over it there is no solid panel to draw closed so on a hot day or during the summer you'll cook all the time at least a little bit but you can't tell the story of a Fiat 500 Abarth inside the cabin you got to do that under the hood we're going there next now of course a huge part of the a bar story is the a Barth motor it's still a 1.4 liter inline 4 sitting this way driving the front wheels but once you add a turbo everything changes this guy goes from about a hundred horsepower in a standard 500 to 160 horsepower 170 foot-pounds of torque it's like a different car gets this 2500 pound diminutive Italian up to 60 and about 6.8 6.9 seconds while delivering 28 34 mpg now another key thing here butts much harder to understand is Fiats MultiAir technology they throttle the engine by actuating the intake valves the bottom line is you can reduce what they call pumping losses and also get very precise metering of the throttle function 10% better power 10% better fuel efficiency on top of what the turbo brings the car is the first thing you get the impression of its light and possible in a different way than a mini mini always feels kind of heavy and kind of like a sled to me this car feels a little tippier lighter nimbler I'm gonna hit the sport mode button right here that's gonna give me sharper throttle response so a higher graduation of the throttle curve I'm gonna also get apparently sharper steering inputs on the electric power steering rack off as I understand it and that's about it the next thing you notice after you get the sport dialed in and you get this guy pushed around a corner is it it rides like a truck although I shouldn't say that because truck makers would sue me for libel I don't know what it rides like but it's a Jhansi little ride part of that is the fact that it's got the firm suspension we've got the bigger wheels riding on 45s and we've got almost no overhang front and rear on this car of overhang in front and behind the axle line really does a lot to modulate a car's ride this car doesn't really have any to do that so I'm sure on paper this is not the best handling car there's no limited slip differential it's front-wheel drive it's got a pretty simple suspension it's a torsion bar with springs in the rear but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts it's fun to drive and it's got credible power where the real basic mini does not okay 2012 508 bars is gonna run you a 22 7 delivered it's a pretty cheap date and comes in about a grand below a bass mini cooper s by the way the options I'd go for 850 even though you're gonna get head cancer but you have a good time doing it thousand dollars will get you these seven teens you got to think about that as we notice the ride is already brutal enough I would probably drop down to the 16s perhaps and then you're going to look at the $400 for that TomTom unit that I'm gonna do anything else with except by that