Fiat 500X Popstar 2016 Review

The 500X Popstar sits one up from base level in the four-tier 500X range, and with it comes the six-speed dual-clutch transmission as standard. The transmission is the most annoying element of what is otherwise a fairly cohesive small SUV. We spend a week in Sydney to see how the $32,000 (plus on-road costs) 500X Popstar stacks up.

In a market heaving with car brands (there’s more than 60!), it’s no surprise that manufacturers will try anything to get buyers into showrooms.

Fiat, for example, has penned its 500X Small SUV to look similar to its long-lived popular 500 Small hatch. The result, unfortunately, looks like an inflatable version of the 500 into which someone pumped too much air.

Then there are Fiat’s model names — 500X works, but from there things go awry.

The 500X reviewed here is the one-up-from-base model ‘Popstar’. What about cutting to the chase and calling this 500X after a specific popstar..?

In my household there resides young people who listen to the likes of Miley Cyrus and Shawn Mendes and too soon will want to buy a car. Such names are too long and there’s the risk that Ms Cyrus or Master Mendes might have some kind of Trumplosion that we’ve seen plenty of lately, where their names to plastered on the back of a car.

A more mature popstar would work better: the Fiat 500X Madonna for example, could have special editions such as Express Yourself or Like a Virgin (“…touched for the very first time”.)

Older people love Small SUVs too, so I’m thinking that a 500X Funky Chicken would be a sure-fire hit. The song’s been re-invented for tots, so you’ll have generations of buyers to come that will get a warm glow when they think of the Funky Chicken song.

After you get past the love it or leave it exterior and silly name things only get better. Pop into the Popstar and you’ll be in a cabin that has a commanding SUV seating position (all the better to stare into the back of other SUVs with, my Dear) and generous head and legroom.

While the front buckets have good support, the rear seat is a bit too firm and upright; but there’s good head and legroom back there. The centre seat on the bench is raised and even firmer but okay for short urban trips.

Vision out of the 500X is very good, except to the rear — but the standard reversing camera fixes that problem.

The Popstar has a good centre screen set-up. It’s easy to pair a phone and scroll through menus and the rest of the instruments and controls present no surprises.

There’s plenty of storage inside — deep door pockets with large bottle holders and front seat-back nets. There are no rear air vents in the back though, more’s the pity.

While the material quality and fit and finish are pretty good, the splashes of red vinyl in the test car felt very cheap.

The boot has a two-level floor, which hides the 16-inch space-saver spare wheel and there’s four tie-down points to keep your gear from rattling around. The boot shape is good — because the hatch is swept forward only from the (relatively high) hip point up, the reward is good cargo storage height, although at 361-litre capacity boot space isn’t huge for the class.

The 1.4-litre turbo-petrol engine is responsive, and it’s worth exploring its upper rev band for the performance it yields, even if it does get noisy doing it.

The engine had a strange stutter when backing off after being under load. Maybe the turbo blow-off valve was having conniptions, but whatever it was, there are plenty of other turbo cars that don’t have this annoying trait.

The Fiat achieved 9.4L/100km on test, in a 60:40 mix of country/urban driving.

While the engine is mostly a good thing, sometimes its goodness gets lost in translation by the time power gets to the wheels. Mostly this boils down to the transmission.

From the first Fiat group automated transmissions in the late 1990s, they have suffered a few traits that make them hard to live with.

The old five-speed single-clutch version used to not so much take a micro-sleep during part-throttle gearshifts as take a long, languid snooze. The long wait for the shift has been reduced in this latest, six-speed dual-clutch version, but with it comes a new irritant. In first gear, the transmission upshifts at 3000rpm unless really you’re into economy-run throttle applications (and then it still waits until around 2000rpm before upshifting).

One of the latest F1 technologies to trickle down to compact SUVs is paddle shifts, which sounds slightly ludicrous. But if well designed they offer better convenience and safety for manual shifting than a floor-shift. The 500X’s paddles are designed well, with positive engagement and are the right shape to make it easy to grab a gear just when you need it.

Once you’ve got the power through the odd transmission, you then face axle tramp when accelerating from a standing start in the wet. It’s not a deal breaker though; you just need to feed in power gradually.

Idle-stop can be very good at re-starting the engine when it’s time to move off or make drivers behind you think that it’s a long text you’re trying to write. There’s no restart anxiety with the 500X; release brake pressure and the engine kicks over immediately.

Some of the Popstar's other electronic gizmos don’t work as well, such as the auto-activated electric handbrake — which will do its thing when you start driving forward on an incline, but does not operate in the same way when in reverse.

The suspension is firm yet has a level of compliance that sees it soaking up nasty potholes really well, while the steering feels light — except in Sport mode where it is well-weighted and offers good feel and feedback.

Brakes are not something written about much these days as most are strong and progressive. The 500X’s brakes were not progressive in feel — not much happened until into the second half of travel. They pulled up well, it just took a lot of getting used to the braking being as condensed as it was.

The 500X Popstar is an interesting alternative in the Small SUV class. It has an eager, engaging engine, well sorted ride/handling compromise and the interior is comfortable and functional. The main problem is that the dual-clutch transmission doesn’t swap cogs nearly as well as any other dual-clutch transmission out there, and certainly not as concisely as a well-sorted conventional automatic.

Price: $32,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 103kW/230Nm
Transmission: Six-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: 5.7L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 133g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Four-star EuroNCAP

Also consider:
>> Mazda CX-3 (from $19,990 plus ORCs)
>> Honda HR-V (from $24,990 plus ORCs)
>> Renault Captur (from $22,990 plus ORCs)