Fiat 500 Lounge 2013 Review

Is Fiat’s 500 Lounge the most gorgeous ultra-light on the market? When a driver as boorishly devoted to function over form as your correspondent opens the door and swoons, it’s a fair bet it is. There’s nothing like it within cooee of the Lounge’s $20K list price.

Oh, and it’s not a bad drive, either. Especially now Fiat has made the formerly optional five-speed automatic transmission standard for the Lounge, now the only 500 to get the 900cc TwinAir engine.

Thanks in large part to the flexibility it gains from its standard paddles, the auto transmission makes a convincing case over the five-speed manual gearbox it supersedes. That said, while the powertrain obliges lazy driving, it delivers its best with active driver input.

Despite its allusions to the cute-but-crude air-cooled twins of Bambinos past, Fiat’s 900cc two-cylinder engine sits above its 1.2-litre four-cylinder stablemate in the 500 order of things. It might be smaller, but at 62kW it’s 20 per cent more potent. It also delivers about 40 per cent more torque -- an impressive 145Nm from just 1900rpm. All of which means it’s faster, if still no firecracker, taking 11 seconds (against 12.9) for the 0-100km/h sprint.

So, of course, it’s costlier. Where the four now starts from $14K drive-away, you won’t put a TwinAir on the road for less than $20K.

What you get for your money is technology -- an engine designed from a clean sheet to make the most of just two cylinders on the conflicting criteria of power and fuel economy. It achieves this by mixing in turbocharging and Fiat’s MultiAir technology.

This has nothing to do with air-cooling. Rather, it’s about variable intake valve timing working with a unique combustion chamber design, helping squeeze maximum muscle from minimum fuel.

Does it work? Sure, if not as well as Fiat’s official fuel consumption figures claim. Try as we might, idle stop-start notwithstanding, we came nowhere near the urban figure of 4.4L/100km. The best we managed round town was 5.6, and that was paddling it. Left to its own devices, the auto proved a consistent couple of points thirstier.

Even at a feather-footed 80-90km/h in fifth on virtually flat highway, we couldn’t push it below 5.2L/100km. How on earth they managed 3.6 on the dyno is a mystery.

Where the 500 Lounge does work is in being delight to occupy and operate. Mostly, anyway.

Finding an appropriate driving position isn’t easy. The seat feels tall and stoolish, like a delivery van. And the absence of telescopic steering column adjustment forced this six-footer to choose between comfort at the tiller or the pedals. Sitting close to the wheel, the go-pedal’s too-high off position forces your foot downwards -- not a good thing in a car that’s all about throttle-off driving. The absence of cruise control, even as an option, doesn’t help.

Dynamically, this little mill is more akin to an oiler than a petrol engine. The auto’s handy in slashing the driver re-education the manual demanded. Come 2000rpm, you’d swear the engine’s barely out of idle. With the auto there to override you, there’s no more banging its head on the rev limiter just when you think it’s time to change up.

While it’s reasonably quick in shunting up through the cogs, if not overly smooth or snappy in the execution, the paddles are great in allowing you to beat the auto to it. On the flat, the engine easily tolerates upshifts a couple of hundred revs below its peak torque band.

Cornering benefits from fairly stiff springs, but the electric steering is low on tactile value and the short wheelbase means it’s unsettled fairly easily by rough surfaces. Not that such things matter in a car so manifestly made for low-speed urban work. Come time for that holiday road trip, you’re better off renting a Falcon.

Ergonomics are either ho-hum or Italian, depending on your skew towards practicality or romance, but they’re not hard to get used to.

The Lounge equipment list is decent with 15-inch alloys, the usual electric stuff, trip computing and Bluetooth phone/audio augmented by climate control, a glass roof with blind and underseat storage.

Storage is below par: no glove box, no centre box, just a bottom-hinged flip-out thing down by the driver’s shin that’s too small to hold a phone, and door pockets as tiny as you’d expect in a car this narrow. Boot space is tight, too -- 185 litres with the rear seats in place, up to 550 when they’re down.

Rear legroom is decent for car of this calibre, but head restraints between the shoulder blades and tragic headroom break the promise for grown-ups. The bigger 500L is on its way here next year, with the possibility of the seven-seat Living MPV to follow.

On safety, it’s five-star ANCAP -- reassuring in a car just 3560mm long and weighing less than a tonne. It’s well equipped for this segment, with seven airbags (including a driver’s kneebag) and all the usual chassis and brake electronics.

For a city sub-light, the Fiat 500 Lounge is costly but accomplished: well mannered, economical enough, safe and pleasant to drive. It has its shortcomings, but I suspect for many they’ll pale into insignificance in this memorably beautiful packaging job.

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