2015 Fiat 500 Pop Hatchback on 2040-cars

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2016 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix recap: another wild show on and off track

Normally we use this space to provide a lengthy recap of the weekend's Formula 1 race, but we're going to try something different since most folks reading this know what happened at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday. Instead, we'll alight on what we saw as the big issues in and around the race. Let us know what you think in Comments. Proper qualifying is back. Thank goodness. It only took a month of embarrassment to fix it. And so is passing! For the third race in a row, big performance improvements at the ten teams behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas and a wider tire selection at this race graced us with opening stints filled with dicing cars. Seeing the McLarens on screen doesn't make us cringe. Manor doesn't only make the global feed when it's being lapped. We've been complaining about parade races for so long that we forgot excitement was possible without rain or wholesale regulation changes. Yes, Mercedes is still the king of the jungle, but there are some other proper midfield beasts on the hunt, too. Malfunctions up and down the grid did help the show in Shanghai, like Lewis Hamilton suffering perpetual troubles, Nico Hulkenberg's runaway front wheel which red-flagged Q2, and Sebastian Vettel's and Kimi Raikkonen's flubbed hot laps in Q3 that let Daniel Ricciardo slip by into second on the grid. Come race day things went all Grand Theft Auto at Turn 1 on the opening lap, sending some of the best cars to the pits. Then came Ricciardo's puncture while leading, then came the Safety Car – all by Lap 5. Nico Rosberg got 38 seconds of airtime on the way to victory – at the start and the finish, and that happened to be his margin of victory, too – otherwise he was a ghost. Everyone else was struggling and juggling. Rosberg's win at the Bahrain Grand Prix put the German at five consecutive victories going back to last year's Mexican Grand Prix. The history books show that any driver who's won five straight contests has gone on to win the championship. With his triumph in China, the German has won the season's first three races, the history books again show that the other nine drivers who've pulled that off have gone on to win the championship. Rosberg, 36 points ahead of his teammate in the standings, is having none of it. He said of the other victors, "But they didn't have Lewis Hamilton as their team-mate." Perhaps Mercedes was right not to make an engine deal with Red Bull last season.

Marchionne hopes Apple will partner with Fiat

Apple wants to make a car. Fiat already makes cars. Therefore, Apple and Fiat should partner to make an Apple Car. Makes sense, right? Clearly, it's not quite that easy, but FCA chief Sergio Marchionne hopes that Cupertino will consider Fiat a worthy candidate for partnership, assuming, of course, that Apple follows through with its overtures into the automobile industry. Marchionne is, according to Bloomberg, a self-proclaimed "Apple freak" who owns every kind of product Apple makes. He suggests that he understands the tech company's needs and wants. "Apple has a language, and you have to be able to speak that language," said Marchionne. "Usually the industry comes into that dialogue with a high degree of arrogance as we know how to make cars. That's not very helpful as their syntax is worth more than our ability to build cars." By "syntax," we assume Marchionne means Apple's sleek and modern design language more than the code behind its software. It's interesting to note that the FCA CEO seems to indicate that Apple would bring more to any partnership than the automaker would. Fair or not, we'd wager that more buyers would care about a potential Apple Car's design and branding than would be concerned with which automaker helped assembled it. A partnership with Apple may be exactly the kind of cure that the FCA CEO believes ails the auto industry. After finding it impossible to further pursue industry consolidation, a tie-up with the massive tech industry, particularly Apple, could generate some much-needed positive cash flow. At present, though, it's all just conjecture – Apple hasn't offered any hints as to the true nature of its so-called Project Titan automotive project, and doesn't seem likely to anytime soon. Related Video:

Say hi to our new long-term 2016 Fiat 500X

We always get pretty excited when a new long-term car shows up. This Fiat 500X was a very welcome addition, as it was immediately put into the summer road-trip rotation. Since it arrived a few weeks back, it has already been to "Up North" Michigan (what we call the northern part of the lower peninsula – don't ask) three times. There's an unboxing video above with the highlights, and below we'll explain in a little more detail which options we chose and why. What we got The collective brain trust here chose the top trim level, Trekking Plus. While we tend to try and avoid the fanciest model, it was cheaper to go with a Trekking Plus rather than option up a Lounge model to get everything we were really interested in. (It's confusing – check out the "Compare Packages" link on the 500X configurator to see what we mean.) The color is called Verde Toscana – that's Tuscan Green for us Americans, and we chose the brown leather instead of black. The Trekking Plus has the 2.4-liter Tigershark four-cylinder and a nine-speed automatic transmission. (More on that soon.) It also has nearly everything you can put in one of these small crossovers, including Uconnect infotainment with navigation, a separate color screen between the gauges, blind-spot monitoring, rear parking sensors with cross-traffic detection, a rearview camera, selectable driving modes, remote start, and 18-inch wheels. We also happen to think the Trekking Plus has the most attractive exterior package among the 500X lineup. The trim names (Pop, Easy, Trekking, Lounge, Trekking Plus) could use some work, though – but hey, it's Italian. What we skipped We bucked the Michigan trend and went with front-wheel drive instead of all-wheel, saving us a theoretical $1,900. We'll put winter tires on it when the snow comes, which should be all we need to get through that six-month season of bleakness. There are some extra-cost paint options, all of which add $1,000, but we decided green looked best and had a price of $0. There are two packages available on the Trekking Plus – the imaginatively named Collection 1 and Collection 2 – but neither really appealed to us, so we skipped them. So you know what we're missing out on, Collection 1 is a big dual-pane sunroof and Beats audio, while Collection 2 is the same dual-pane sunroof packaged with auto high-beams, automatic wipers, lane departure with lane-keeping, and forward-collision braking.