Just today i see the new 2012 Fiat 500 in the street.The car is really small and looks like a Smart.I really think that cars today are going smaller and smaller.People buy them for gas price reasons but sometimes saving gas is not all.Do you like that cars are going smaller every year?Here a video clip from You-Tube of the Fiat 500.

YouTube - ‪2012 Fiat 500 - First Test‬‏

 

Cars are getting smaller? You sure about this?

Look at the Accord/Civic/Corolla/Camry/Pickup trucks/SUV's/Minivans/everything is getting bigger.

Even your Fit is bigger than a GD

and the new 500 is a giant next to the original 500

 

I went for a test drive... It's a very interesting car seriously! The 1.4l Multi-air Engine could embarass a Fit!! Seriously!!! A you can count on Mopar to get some very serious stuff for that car... If they import the Abarth and Abarth SS, it would be a Killer car!!

Marko!!

 

The Fiat 500 is going to be Chrysler's new small car which I think is a little too small. Chrysler needs to develop something about the size of the Ford Focus, Ford Fiesta, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic... in that area to be competitive with that class.

The Dodge Neon achieved a measure of success as a small vehicle and still has a loyal albeit ever dwindling following today; unfortunately, the 500 is sized too small to fill the void left by the demise of the Neon. Yes, the Neon did have a horrid reputation that was somewhat undeserved by a round of bad press after the head gasket issues.

I do like small cars... but I'm not shoe-horning myself into a 500 or Smart anytime soon. lol

 

Well small is okay, but I think efficient is more like it. We've enjoyed relatively low gas prices here in the U.S. until the last few years. I don't think cars should get physically smaller just more gas efficient or completly gas free. Take at look at the VW POLO GTI ~ Supercharged with a Turbo on a 1.4L and a 7 speed dual clutch. Man they are getting complex. All I know is that I can barely fit my hand in the engine bay to check the tranny fluid!!

 

op- actually cars are getting bigger and bigger to support the fat american demand.

a honda Fit should be smaller than a Civic yet it's now at the same size of an older model civic. civics are now accord size and accords are now almost full sized sedan like a maxima size.

while cars and humans get bigger and more safety standards are required bigger engines are used to crank more power resulting in more fuel consumption (for economy car) and less mpg. take for instance a 1990 civic hb that did over 40mpg no issue... you'll need to get a hybrid today got get that kind of mpg consistently.

cars are getting bigger in general

 

It's a typical A-class car. It's a bit bigger than an Toyota Aygo/Citroen C1, a bit smaller than a Mini Cooper.

And cars seem to have stabilized size-wise. The Civic/Accord size gain is from a company that started with tiny cars in a fuel crisis and built up from there. Other than a few large SUVs, there aren't any cars around as massive as full sizers from before the Big-3 downsizing.



The weight is understandable, when you look at how badly cars used to do in crash tests.

Paul56:
"I do like small cars... but I'm not shoe-horning myself into a 500 or Smart anytime soon. lol"

I got tired of shoehorning myself into a B-segment, and thus went back to a C-segment car, so I totally understand. Was considering a midsize coupe, but found a compact that fit my needs.

The thing that bugs me about small cars these days is how tall they are. It makes the proportions look pretty awful. The Fit looks too tall, the Fiat is almost as tall. Heck, my Scion is over 56 inches. It's like the Nissan Axxess finally got its revenge on the automotive universe!

Remember when small cars weren't built like minivans?



I blame Boomers with deteriorating backs and knees for the kitchen-chair posture in most new small cars. It's like an Israeli city - no space to build out, so they build up. 50 feet of headroom but you sit shoulder to shoulder with your knees in your face.

I do give the Japanese props for finally (somewhere in the mid 90's) building cars wider than 66.7 inches. I don't care about taxation in Japan when I'm rubbing elbows with my passenger.

 

Cars debut small, but in the American market, that is temporary. If the model catches on, you can bet your bank account the "next gen" version will be bigger. Americans are never satisfied and keep wanting more, so corporate America gives it to them, wither or not it's the right thing to do.

 

They do it to a point and then reboot smaller.

1962 Cutlass


1965 Cutlass - bigger


1968 Cutlass - bigger


1973 Cutlass Supreme - bigger


1978 Cutlass Supreme- smaller


1989 Cutlass Supreme - smaller


1999 Cutlass - smaller


Remember, the Ford Panthers were released as downsized "Full-size" cars that were the size of what had been intermediates. I remember my grandmother complaining that her '83 Crown Vic felt so small after her older LTD bit it.

As another example:

1983 Jeep Cherokee (full size truck):


1984 Jeep Cherokee (almost as small as a Fit):


And yeah, the Fiat 500 and Mini Cooper are both monsterously large compared to the cars they imitate. I see an old Fiat 500 every day on the way to work. It's itty-bitty.

 

I want the Alfa's to come back. Those are sweet cars. Hopefully, the Fiats will not be as bad as they used to be. Cute but, just too much to keep running.

 

I have to agree with you on that one! I had 4 Neons in the past and they're solid cars for the Price you can have them used! The engine is prone to piston slap and the transmission wont take serious abuse (...WOT powershifts all day long...) but it's ridiculously easy to mod with great results (SRT4 turbos bolt right on the standard DOHC head, Automatic Neon's bigger TB from a Junkyard, 50$ rear swaybar conversion from an R\T - ACR Neon, used performance parts from a part out car, 2.4l Stratus or SRT4 Engine conversions, etc!) and can take some abuse... Seriously, i recommend a well maintained 1st gen Neon to any novice driver that want a fun car but that doesn't want to invest an arm and a leg on it! Fun to drive, inexpensive car and parts, lightweight!

Marko!!

 

I saw the Fiat 500 a few days ago in person. Not even close to being as small as a Smart. Around the same size as a Yaris hatchback or so?

 

Looks that the title of my post was not my best.I know that my GE is more bigger than a GD and YES a lot of cars are more bigger every year.I know that the new Fiat 500 is bigger than the original Fiat 500.This is also with the mini cooper.Today mini cooper is bigger than the original mini.Really when i saw the new 2012 Fiat 500 pass near me i just said...."Another small car for the collection for today tiny cars".Every year more new small cars are coming out to try to beat gas price.I think that some small cars looks very nice but if you need space some of them can not give you that.I think that my post title must be...."The new 2012 Fiat 500....another small car in the street"...:).

 

I prefer small cars. Over the years I've had my share of Dauphines, VW Bugs, CRX and many two seater sport cars. Along with my Fit my other car is a Miata. For a long time I had interest in the soon-to-be FT-86 (FR-S) but the final prototype is too far over the top for me so I will be looking for something else that is "small" to replace my Miata (when I decide to sell it).

 

I'm all for more small cars. If I were king I'd slap a substantial consumption tax on anything other than commercial vehicles over 3,300 pounds/1,500 Kg. curb weight or that got worse than 22/28 city/hwy mileage.
I also share Occam's dislike of the trend to tall cars although I do like large glass area. The 60" Fit towers over the old 50" tall CRX and CRX in turn towers over the barely over three foot tall Lotus Seven/Caterham or the 40" Ford GT40. If we can get some of the view-blocking giant SUVs, not-so-mini vans and pickups off the road (most of them apparently driving around largely empty the majority of the time) 55" inches in height should adequately tall for all of us not confined to wheelchairs.
If Fiat/Chrysler can create new cars in the vein of the tiny Abarth coupes, the 850, 128 and 124 series, the lovely Alfa Romeo 105/115 coupes of the late 60s to mid 70s or the 1980s GTVs but with modern levels of corrosion resistance and reliability* I think there is an audience, especially if gas prices push above $4/gal again. Modern Japanese (Honda included) and American cars are tending toward the overly bland. I'd love to see Fiat breath some soul back into small cars.

*A major caveat given that neither Chrysler nor Fiat have been able to manage anything approaching Japanese levels of reliability or fit and finish.

 

not many Americans actually want small vehicles, their chosen based on other reasons, not just gas consumption.

technically its possible to build large cars with fuel efficiency, but using such lightweight materials is costly and not always ideal in durability or crash testing.

 

Is it because we're fat?

Are Americans Too Big To Drive Small?

 

I call BS... cars are like our alter-egos. You find a really, really fat woman, and you can count on watching her shoehorn herself into the smallest car she can find. Pick out a lifted truck with fake big-rig accessories (roof marker lights, mud flaps, etc.) Chances are it's a short dude driving it.

This whole conversation brings up something that's crossed my mind recently. Cars aren't so much getting bigger currently... they're becoming less varied in size and weight. The twin, opposed forces of CAFE regulations and safety standards are pushing both extremes toward the middle. Hence, small cars continue to approach the relative size of midsizers, large cars shrink down closer to midsizers, and they seem to be coalescing on what I consider to be the prototypical size for an American car: a Tri-5 Chevy.

The Panther is extinct now, replaced by an updated Taurus. The Panther itself was a downsized full-size car. The Civic is growing into midsize territory. Most modern cars slot into a curb weight between 3000 and 4000 lbs. with a scare few above or below that.

1955 Chevrolet: 196" long, 74" wide, 62" tall, 115" wb. Curb weight: 3240-3595 lbs

2012 Honda Accord: 194" long, 73" wide, 58" tall, 110" wb. Curb weight 3217 - 3605 lbs.

203" long, 76" wide, 61" tall, 113" wb, 3767-3930 (yeah, it's kindof a pig, but it's the new Fullsize Ford)

I find it remarkable that the prototypical American family sedan is so stable in size.

Fun trivia: the 1984 Dodge Caravan had roughly the same footprint as the current Civic sedan. That downsizing fad really shrank cars quite a bit!

 

I was visiting family in Delaware last week, and noticed that a Hummer dealership had been converted to a Fiat dealership! I can't begin to describe how happy that made me feel.

So, I decided to stick my head through the door and take a new Fiat 500 for a test drive. With a stick shift, performance seems about the same as a Fit Sport Auto. However, the ride is softer, and the engine is quieter — both of which were complete surprises to me. Front seats seem more supportive than those of the Fit, but rear seats are awful — for all practical purposes, the Fiat 500 is a 2-seater. Interior finish is quite nice, although I found the instrument panel a little cluttered, and Edmunds.com's reviewer's description of the iPod interface sounded horrible. With the rear seats folded down, cargo room isn't bad, although it's nothing like what you get with the "magic seats" of the Fit. Looking under the hood, the engine is completely hidden by a plastic shroud, BUT, the oil filler is easily accessible, unlike that of the Fit, which is almost impossible to use without a funnel with a flexible tube. (Fortunately, the Fit uses absolutely no measurable amount of oil between oil changes).

Overall, I was more favorably impressed than I expected to be — especially by the smooth ride and quiet engine. However, what I'm really waiting for is the Fiat 500 Abarth, which is supposed to show up on these shores in 6 months. Turbocharged, with 135 BHP! That should be interesting.

All that said, Edmunds.com's road test of the Fiat 500 hit the nail on the head:

It's a really interesting little car (much bigger than my first "new" car, a Honda N600, which was 125" bumper to bumper, and weighed about 1700 pounds), but given past history, I will not be an early adopter, although I definitely plan to go back for a test drive when the Abarths become available.

 

The more smaller cars the better! If I didn't have a family, or the Fiat 500 came with four doors, I'd seriously consider it. I love small cars, coming from a 6' 270lb guy.