It’s got style, but at a steep price
Despite AWD, cheerfully designed crossover is OK for short jaunts, but not rutted rural roads
When it comes to food, art, fashion and history, it’s hard not to think of Italy. When it comes to the country where sleek, fast, sexy cars are made, Italy is at the top of the list. When it comes to sport utes, however, Italy is barely a blip on the radar.
This might help explain why, in a segment hotter than a scotch bonnet, the cute and urbane Fiat 500X languishes at the bottom of the heap. Then, there’s Fiat’s less-thanstellar reputation: the “Fix It Again, Tony” past still haunts the company. If you read sources such as Consumer Reports, you’ll see it continues to weigh on Fiat’s current crop of vehicles in North America.
Despite the family history hanging over its roof, the 500X (which debuted in the 2016 model year) is not without appeal. The subcompact runabout has a sense of style; it is in formal wear when many of the competition — Honda’s HR-V, the Mazda CX-3 and Subaru’s Crosstrek — are wearing jeans or sweat pants. The 500X is not a vehicle to be seen slogging through rutted tracks on the way to the cottage, like its Jeep cousin, the (slightly) more macho Renegade, but for pulling into Starbucks to grab a morning cappuccino, even when weather and road conditions aren’t conducive to easy travel. (And on that front, the Fiat’s available all-wheel-drive system has a disconnecting rear axle to improve efficiency by reducing parasitic loss when AWD isn’t needed.)
Style doesn’t come cheap, however. Though the 500X starts at a low $23,245 for the base frontwheel-drive, six-speed manual, turbo 1.4-litre Pop model, the topline and fully featured Lounge tester (there’s also the mid-level Trekking) with all-wheel drive, larger 2.4-L four-cylinder engine, ninespeed automatic transmission and all the option boxes ticked off comes within 10 bucks of $39,000 (before taxes). One can pick up a larger and loaded Honda CR-V Touring for the same coin, a far more prudent choice for many, though the mainstream CR-V doesn’t display nearly the same cheerfulness as the Fiat.
Neither does style come without limits. I look at the 500X and see a crossover better suited to in-town usage or short jaunts than a cross-Canada trek. Finding a comfortable driving position took a lot of fiddling with the seat and tilt/telescoping steering wheel. Unless you have arms like a gorilla, those on the plus side of six feet are going to have to get closer to the wheel than they like, which does compromise legroom. And considering the 500X is subcompact sized, the comfort of the rear-seat passengers is very much dependent on the size of the front-seat occupants.
Once underway, the 500X displays decent verve. The big 2.4-L four puts out 180 horsepower, which is more than the majority of its competition. So equipped, the 1,500-kilogram Lounge will accelerate to 100 km/h in about 10 seconds, about par for the segment. There have been complaints that the nine-speed automatic is neither smooth nor responsive and I tend to agree. When it does shift, it does so quite cleanly. The problem is that the automatic can hang onto its gears longer before up- or downshifting. The former causes a rather obnoxious drone to resonate throughout the cabin, which very quickly proves tiring.
This nine-speed box is not working for FCA and should be replaced with something aggravation-free — like a solid six-speed — until the automaker can work out the bugs. (Alternatively, you could consider either the less expensive Pop or Trekking models with the 160-hp, 1.4-L turbo four and the six-speed manual.)
There is a Dynamic Selector system that allows drivers to select the most suitable drive mode — Auto, Sport or Traction — for different driving conditions. Though Fiat says Auto — calibrated to optimize comfort and fuel economy — is the best for everyday driving, Sport mode offered better control of the transmission and made the 500X more responsive, especially when using the transmission’s manumatic function and self-shifting.
Considering the crossover’s compact overall size (4,248 millimetres in length), its ride is somewhat choppy over rougher surfaces. Then again, the same could be said of much of the 500X’s rivals. The steering has a good weight to it and the crossover, despite an elevated height that initially unsettles, does corner well with little body lean.
Where the 500X generally, and the Lounge edition specifically, shines is its cabin environment, a genuinely cheery layout designed to make one feel … I don’t know, jaunty, perhaps? The dashboard is colour coordinated to the exterior paint job that is offset by a particularly attractive black and tobacco duo-tone for the seats and door trim.
Like the other 500s, the X’s setup is an exercise in exaggeration. The shifter and most of the buttons and controls on the dash are oversized. The optional 6.5-inch screen interface is part of the Uconnect/navigation system, offering hands-free calling and Bluetooth streaming audio, as well as voice-command control of the radio and a media hub for integration of portable devices. It’s also the screen for the rear-view camera. The tester came with the well regarded BeatsAudio sound system, which includes eight speakers and an eight-channel amplifier with the BeatsAudio digital sound-processing algorithm.
The crossover comes loaded with safety and security features, including forward-collision warning, lane-departure warning, blind-spot monitor, rear cross-path detection and much more.
Clearly, urbanity is more of an acquired taste than the pseudo-rugged nature of most of the 500X’s competition (the aforementioned Jeep Renegade sibling, also made in Italy, outsells the 500X five to one). Equally clear is that there are certain mechanical issues FCA needs to sort out before the 500X can be considered an enjoyable drive. As much as I admire the crossover’s uniqueness, its peccadillos put a damper on the experience.