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Fiat’s new big small car – the 500L

Fiat has enjoyed great success with the retro styled Fiat 500. Now it wants to extend that appeal to drivers who need something bigger. Enter the Fiat 500L.
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17 December 2012

 

The Fiat 500L
Big car with small car appeal – the Fiat 500L. You can even have one with its own Lavazza coffee machine

LARGE Fiats haven’t always been a popular choice with company car drivers, but here’s one that might buck the trend.

The trick? Producing a big Fiat that plugs into the success of the company’s most successful small car, the 500, by adopting as much of its looks and style as possible.

 

  • The new 500L – the L stands for Large, by the way – follows the path already successfully trodden by BMW when it produced the much bigger Countryman version of the MINI.

 

Fiat says the five-door Fiat 500L is longer than a Punto and as wide as a Bravo, and its roomy interior certainly offers plenty of practical space for passengers and their luggage. It also has a 5-star Euro NCAP crash safety rating in its favour.

Where it could really score over the MINI Countryman, though, is on price and value. The Fiat 500L starts at £14,990 – that’s for cars with the 1.4-litre petrol engine and the entry level Pop Star or Easy trims, with all 500Ls getting a five-inch touchscreen radio, Bluetooth, six airbags, ESP stability programme, cruise control and a leather gearknob and steering wheel.

The Pop Star also gets a body-coloured dashboard, alloy wheels and side door mouldings, while Easy gets rear parking sensors, a soft-touch dashboard and electric rear windows instead. At the top of the range, cars with Lounge trim have climate control, 16-inch alloys, side mouldings, rear parking sensors, electric rear windows, a large fixed glass roof, light sensor, rain sensor, front fog lamps and a rear armrest. There’s also a long list of personalisation options, including a Lavazza-branded on-board coffee making machine.

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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