FIAT 500 Car Review by EC Auto Body San Francisco Bay Area

Dec. 30, 2011 - PRLog -- EC Auto Body: EC Auto Body Auto Repair San Francisco
Fiat 500 Car Review


EC Auto Body, San Francisco’s auto repair experts for auto body
repair, car collision repair, insurance auto repair and car repair in San Francisco have just finished testing out the brand new Fiat 500 in the SanFrancisco Bay Area.
EC Auto Body has repaired and refinished several types of automobiles in the San Francisco Bay area. Ranging from sedan repair, coupe repairs, hatchback car repair, mini van repair, station wagon repair, touring car repair, sports car repair, mid sized sedan repair, compact car repair, SUV repair, luxury car repair, foreign car repair, and domestic car repair EC Auto Body repairs all types of cars.
EC Auto Body, Auto Repair Experts in San Francisco – recently got its hands on the brand new Fiat 500 to test out and review. Here are some of EC Auto Body Auto Body Repair San Francisco findings when we tested out the brand new Fiat 500.
Visit http://ec-autobody.com for details

The Good:

• The Fiat 500 is extremely stylish.
No matter from what angle you look at the brand new Fiat 500 in San Francisco, the Fiat 500 looks unique, cute and fashionably in tune to today’s modern fashion trends. From its exterior round curves, round lights to its colorful interior trim the car has a lot of style with a modern simplification.

•The Fiat 500 is ideal for urban cities.
The Fiat 500 is ultra compact and its chassis is designed specifically for
urban drivers with reasonably short driving commutes. The Fiat 500 is set to be competing with the Mini Cooper for the compact Auto market San Francisco. In addition EC Auto Body located at 250 Napoleon Street in San Francisco, experienced that parking in the city of San Francisco was a lot easier when EC Auto Body was using the Fiat 500 compared to that of medium sized or even compact sized sedans such as Honda Accords or even a Toyota Corolla. You know those “scraps” of parking spaces that you would never think to consider parking at? EC Auto Body in San Francisco found out that the Fiat 500 can conveniently park in those unused “scrap” street parking spaces. In San Francisco this makes things a lot easier during anyone’s busy day and weekend trips running errands.


• Excellent Fuel Economy.
The Fiat 500 has a naturally aspirated 1.4-liter in line 4 cylinder engine that produces 101 horsepower and 98 lbs/ft or torque. Our model with the 6 speed automatic transmission achieved 27 mpg in the city and 34 mpg in the highway. Now, these number might not seem like much considering there are cars such as the Toyota Prius and other hybrids that achieve marginally better fuel economy between (3 –10 miles better) but at a higher premium cost. Is paying $5,000 - $10,000 more for 3 to 10 more miles per gallon a fair trade off? – yea, we didn’t think so either.

The Not So Good:
• Did we mention that it was small?
In Europe and other parts of the world, driving cultures have accepted small cars and their compact space – they have internalized the reality that space is limited. However, here in the USA where Americans are notoriously known for big cars, big back seats and big engines, - our driving culture is just beginning to barely recognize this, and the only places that are beginning to show recognition is in major urban cities. With that in mind, the Fiat 500 in San Francisco is not a family car, nor is it an ideal car for long road trips, as it lacks the necessary space for your planed getaway luggage.


• The Ride Quality Could be Better
EC Auto Body in San Francisco, tested out the Fiat 500 Sport model which comes with the optional and more aggressive looking 16 inch alloy wheels, red colored and more sporty brake calipers and an aero body kit (front and rear bumper fascias and a rear deck spoiler). The ride quality though is not as what one would imagine, and if you compare it to the Mini Cooper, it feels cheaper, the power steering and driver connectedness (response feel) is lacking big time. At the same time you can’t expect the car to drive and handle like a BMW – especially when you consider the price of the Fiat 500 in San Francisco.

•The customization feels a bit cheap
The Fiat 500 gives its buyers “customization” – which to the automotive insiders translates to modularization in assembly production of the car. Now we like the style of the car and how it is in tune to modern fashion, however the materials used (particularly on the dash color accents) feel as though the Fiat 500 when assembled in production, someone took a glue stick and slapped the red colored dash and went on to the next Fiat 500. Sure it looks good, but once you feel it and experience being inside the cabin it can be a bit
overwhelming. Lastly, American’s have in the past associated the Fiat brand of cars as being cheap and unreliable and the customization/modularization can reinforce this negative consumer stigma.

OVERALL REVIEW:
The Fiat 500 equipped with 101 hp is a decently agile,compact car ideal for the city driving in San Francisco. EC Auto Body, Auto Repair experts in San Francisco rather enjoyed the practicality of the Fiat 500 in San Francisco. The American Fiat 500 is also equipped with adequate safety features such as a reinforced rear underbody and as well as 7 air bags. The Fiat 500 that EC Auto Body had a chance to test out is the first generation of 500 model from Fiat and EC Auto Body feels that the Fiat 500 is going to be a common driven car in the immediate future. We like the direction and are excited to see the direction in the
automotive industry.
EC Auto Body is well respected and highly trusted elite auto body shop center in San Francisco Bay Area, CA. EC Auto Body handles all types of auto body repair for all cars,
trucks and SUV’s Proudly and respectfully trusted Auto body repair, Auto Collision Repair.

# # #

EC Auto Body is San Francisco's experts for all automotive collision repair. EC Auto Body performs all types of auto body repair ranging from heavy collision repair to minor scratch removal and bumper repair.