2012 Fiat 500 Convertible Pop Damaged Rebuilder Economical Nice Color Wont Last on 2040-cars

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2013 Fiat 500e

A Juice Box With Style And Substance
It happens nearly every day, and as often as not, I'm the guilty party: someone slips an eBay Motors or Craigslist link into the fetid automotive stew that is the Autoblog editors' online chatroom. Typically, it's enough to momentarily derail an otherwise productive dialog about editing a breaking news item or researching an arcane bit of automotive history. Predictably, we've all got our favorites. Once dubbed "Mr. Other Makes" by a former coworker and friend who noticed my penchant for four-wheeled eBay esoterica, I can't help but spend at least a few minutes trawling the online classifieds every night before I go to bed, staring glassy-eyed at some basketcase Bitter SC, Inca-wheeled Saab 99 Turbo, a moonshot Plymouth Road Runner Superbird or resuming my quest to seek out the world's last remaining unmolested first-gen Nissan Sentra SE-R.
Every Autoblog staffer has their peccadilloes, Editor-in-Chief John Neff among them. His classified quests skew toward larger sport sedans that discreetly package big performance. As the former owner of a first-gen Ford Taurus SHO Plus, Neff is a serial viewer of Pontiac G8, Audi S6, Lincoln LS V8 and BMW M5 listings. Yet the current apple of his eye is the 500E. No, not the bubbly electric Fiat shown here that shares its name, but rather the imposing 1991-1994 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, a hand-built V8 monster developed and assembled with Porsche acting as Daimler's skunkworks. A rare car, its values are starting to escalate, a reality that has Neff closer than ever to pulling the trigger.

Fiat brand chief reassigned then resigns amid flagging sales

Jason Stoicevich was replaced as head of the Fiat brand in North America just the other day. He was immediately reassigned to another job within Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. But according to Automotive News, Stoicevich quit the new job – and the company altogether – the very next day. The development comes amidst flagging sales for the Fiat brand in America. The introduction of the awkward-looking 500L multi-purpose vehicle has been largely regarded as a sales disaster in the US. Despite having just introduced the new 500X into the growing crossover market, and an overall upward trend across FCA group sales, the Fiat brand's figures have been dropping all year. While the Italian brand's volume has fluctuated from month to month compared to last year's sales, the number of cars its dealers sells on an average day has been firmly in decline. Fiat's downward trend reflects a general tendency in the market towards larger vehicles at the expense of smaller ones. However, the powers that be in Auburn Hills evidently felt that a change of leadership was in order, so it placed Dodge chief Tim Kuniskis in charge of all the company's mass-market passenger-car brands – namely Dodge, Chrysler, and Fiat – and moved Stoicevich to running the group's fleet and small-business operations. Stoicevich remained in charge of the company's California Business Center, but it seems as though he was as dissatisfied with the switch as his superiors were with the performance of the brand over which he presided, and so he apparently elected to step down and leave the company.

Lapo Elkann calls out Renault Twingo for copying Fiat 500 [w/poll]

Small cars are becoming big business, especially for European automakers that are amping up the style. But is each new Euro city car's style unique?
Lapo Elkann is calling that into question. The brother of Fiat chairman John Elkann and the grandson of his late predecessor Gianni Agnelli is known as much as a style icon as he is for his work within the Fiat Group, which he has served in various capacities. He's combined the two by birthing various special editions of the Fiat 500 like the Gucci edition (to say nothing of his own denim-clad Ferraris), but now his eye is fixed on another European city car: the new Renault Twingo.
Posting photos of both vehicles on his Facebook page, Lapo is calling Renault out for what he sees as copying the Cinquecento's design.