2012 Fiat 500 Lounge Hatchback 2-door 1.4l 5-spped 38-40 Mpg 3998 Miles on 2040-cars

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Fiat 695 Abarth 70th Anniversary is the most absurd and awesome Fiat 500 variant yet

Fiat recently told us it would be discontinuing the Fiat 500 hatchback and convertible in America, but Europe still enjoys small cars. There, Fiat just took the wraps off the nuttiest and most shocking 500 variant of all, the 695 70th Anniversary edition. Although we won’t be getting it in America, we can't help but gawk at that spoiler. Look at it! Abarth went all out with this manually adjustable spoiler, naming it “Spoiler ad Assetto Variabile.” There are 12 different settings, varying from 0 degrees to 60 degrees in full attack. Fiat says its highest downforce setting provides 92.6 pounds of downforce at 124 mph. Testing was done in an Italian wind tunnel, ensuring the wingÂ’s functionality. It also says “Abarth” on it in big lettering, making it even cooler. The Fiat 695 Abarth is a tribute to the 70th anniversary of Abarth, which was founded in 1949 by Carlo Abarth. Only 1,949 will be made, and itÂ’s more than just the wing that sets it apart. All of the anniversary cars will get a full body kit, contrasting with the main paint color. A checkered roof and Abarth Scorpion stickers will also set it apart from other 500s. Additionally, Fiat is equipping all of them with the vocal Record Monza exhaust, a limited-slip differential, bright-red Brembo brake calipers and special 17-inch alloy wheels.  On the interior, folks will get “Sabelt Tricolor” seats only meant for this special edition car — theyÂ’re black, but they have the Italian flag colors on the headrest. Power remains the same as a regular 695 Abarth, putting out 180 horsepower and 185 pound-feet of torque from the 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder. YouÂ’ll be able to hit 62 mph in 6.7 seconds with this Abarth and a top speed of 139.8 mph.

Fiat set to invest $12B on new models, stop Euro losses in 3 years

Naturally, you'd expect a massive automaker like Fiat to have an in-depth plan to exit the current European-market doldrums, and you'd expect that plan to include plenty of new vehicles to attract those precious buyers that still remain despite the financial downturn. And you'd be right, though Fiat does seem to have a few unexpected twists up its corporate sleeve.
Perhaps the biggest shocker is a report that Fiat will completely drop the Punto, a car with mass-market appeal aimed at small-car buyers cross-shopping the popular Volkswagen Polo. Its replacement will be a five-door Fiat 500 aimed at upmarket buyers (sounds awfully similar to the 500L) that will be built in Poland. Lower-end customers will reportedly be served by variants of the Fiat Panda.
Borrowing a page from the BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen playbook, reports Automotive News, Fiat is said to have plans to reignite production at its Italian factories by retooling them to build high-end vehicles from Maserati and Alfa Romeo. These will be marketed as premium products, built by skilled Italian workers (who are paid wages that are 75-percent higher than those building Fiats in Poland), and will be sold around the world.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.