I realize that this is one of those situations where I’m likely going to find myself very alone. I’m okay with that. Sometimes in life you just need to draw a line in the sand, take a stand, put yourself out there to defend something unpopular, and, even more significantly, unimportant. Sometimes you have to pick a hill that’s so far from the battlefield, so useless and insignificant and generally blissfully forgotten by nearly everyone else, and you have to pick that hill to die on. Or at least get maybe a little nauseous on. This is my hill, and there’s a Fiat 500L parked on it.
From what I can tell, almost nobody seems to like the 500L, at least not openly, and that never sat right with me. I know it’s not a great car, sure, I’m not completely delusional. But it’s also not a bad car, especially when you consider its whole reasons for existing, and I think it even manages to have a good bit of unexpected character, too, and some surprises. It’s just not as miserable as everyone seems to think, and I’m not even sure what the hell people are thinking it was supposed to be, anyway, and maybe everyone should just shut their big yaps already and drive off in their fucking CR-Vs or Outlanders or whatever other forgettable bullshit they thought was so much better, even when they could have picked up an unwanted 500L for a bag of pimples and and and okay, take it easy, Jayjay. Breathe.
Did you know these were built at the Serbian factory that used to make Yugos? Does that improve your opinion of them? I like that. You can be snob if you want, though. I won’t judge, audibly.
Not many people bought 500Ls, especially in America. According to these numbers, all of, lets see, eight have been sold in America this year. I mean, they went out of production in 2020, so it’s amazing they sold any really. The biggest year was 2014, with 12,413 sold, but by 2020 they only moved 475 of these things. Oof.
And, this is the first production car with a factory espresso-maker option! That didn’t sway some people? It seems to have worked like this:
So, what’s the problem with these cars? You know what I think the problem really is? The 500L was a car that had some very specific, perhaps idiosyncratic, but practical goals, and didn’t bother playing the expected game of the time, which was to be a pretend-rugged or aggressive SUV or crossover.
The whole point of the 500L was telegraphed into the use of the most right-anglest of letters, L, which stood for Large, Light, or Loft, and I think generally those Ls make sense. It was all about interior room and packaging. It had a tall greenhouse with lots of glass in an era when beltlines were getting higher and cars were feeling more and more claustrophobic.
Fiat designer Andreas Wuppinger explained it all quite well in Fiat’s book about the 500L’s design, called Fiat 500L: A Design Approach:
The 500L is characterized by a continuous glazing, large apertures towards the outside and a highly liveable internal space. The design of bodywork inspires a sensation of safety obtained through a high belt line, the accentuated shape of the wheel arches and a raised driving position. As a point of reference we did not, however, consider the SUV, which often has a negative connotation: grandeur, high consumption and almost shielding one from the outside. Here the process is the opposite; I feel protected inside the car but have a great view of the exterior; the clutter of the bodywork is reduced but the space available inside is maximized.
They deliberately weren’t just trying to make another me-too SUV, they had a plan. A plan based on the humble yet important root question of what the 500L would be for: moving people and their shit from place to place, usually over paved roads. That’s it! It’s designing a car from first principles! And what the hell is wrong with that?
This book also has some visuals I don’t quite get:
So.., the Topolino is like an old camera, and the original 500 is like a newer camera? Because of how it goes out instead of in? Okay.
Are the people who bought RAV4s so much better, choosing bigger wheels and less interior space and more limited visibility and a less-friendly look because, what, they’re gonna take the RAV4 out into the desert and fight for water against the People Of The Last Oil Derrick? No, they’re not. They’re going to drive to Trader Joe’s with one eye on their phone like the rest of us dipshits. At least the 500L had the dignity to be designed for the job it would actually do.
It was tall overall, with a high seating position and a cargo area with a divider to make multiple stories, and the interior was a sort of pleasant and open place to be. Here, look:
The designers said their inspiration for the interior was Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye!
Europe even got an extended-wheelbase version with three rows that could seat seven. Seven people.
Also, Look at this novel double-A-pillar design! Almost every other car has a fat, beefy A-pillar right there, and it gets in your view and makes you long for the days of tiny, thin, elegant pillars, when life was cheap and a car wreck meant you’d spend the rest of your days as a voice emanating from a burlap sack.
The 500L solves this problem with that split A-pillar, giving you great corner visibility! I liked it, when I drove one! Who else does that?
I think a lot of what I respect about he 500L is that it takes inspiration from one of the first bigger-on-the-inside wonders of packaging, the Fiat Multipla. Both the original and the re-born one:
I think they’re brilliant inspirations, though I do really wish they stuck to their guns more when it came to the updated design. Look at those first sketches!
Would it have sold better if they were more daring and stuck to a true one-box design? Maybe not, but it’d have been cool as hell, I think.
Look, I’m just going to come out and say it: the failure of the 500L is not its fault, it’s yours. Well, I guess ours, because I didn’t buy one either. But I respect what it was trying to do, which was just its fucking job. It was honest and earnest, not some goofy poser in brand-new hiking boots and a camo vest like every other SUV or crossover on the market.
The 500L was an affable, smiling goofball that brought everything you forgot to bring on your camping trip. It wasn’t cool because it didn’t give a shit about being cool – and it still doesn’t. Maybe you felt a little silly being seen with it, but it did everything you asked of it, easily.
And, you could get it in a stick shift and in fun, bright, real colors. Yellow, red, even a real brown. Yes, a brown manual wagon was possible.
When I drove a manual 500L way back, I thought it reminded me of my Scion xB: useful, practical, airy, open, comfortable, and surprisingly fun. Humble, unpretentious, non-judgemental. The 500L was not a dickhead. And I think that’s not something you can say about many, many cars on the market today. [Editor’s Note: I thought the shifter felt like a toy — slidey, with little notchiness/feedback. But I didn’t hate the car. -DT].
So, sure, go ahead and laugh at the 500L. Call it names, roll your eyes, whatever makes you feel better. The truth is the 500L is secure with who it is, and if you have enough security of your own to drive one, and really understand the point of the thing, I bet you’d like it. I mean, how much more invigorating is driving a Nissan Rogue, anyway? It’s not.
The 500L got a raw deal. It’s just not as bad as everyone says. So there.
You couldn’t get one with a manual right?
Sorry Torch, but the 500L is straight up ugly. If it hewed closer to the regular 500, it might be more appealing. Ie, get rid of that ugly exterior door trim, the ugly lights, the ugly black plastic grille components… get rid of all the ugly and go for a similar silhouette to the 500.
Rarely am I so convinced to buy a car I’ve never thought twice about! How is their gas mileage? Are they cheap enough on the used market now? A commuter that makes its own espresso? I’m actually thinking I could drive one.
When i learned about the espresso maker I wanted one. Saw it at the Chicago Auto show, I fit in it and I adore the split A pillar. Save a bicyclist or pedestrian by being able to see them. Yes it was ungainly but it was Italian. Then I found out that the espresso option was Europe only. I remembered we can’t have nice things. I look at them on the used market and it is cheap for what it is. Probably because it is an orphan and where the hell is it going to be serviced? Still that funky orange or the electric yellow speak to my inner child.
Deal breaker then. I do like the odd character of the car, but I was dreaming of an Autobot making me coffee everyday. I was also disappointed that all of the used 500L I found were black, white, or rarely blue… never that crazy orange!
2 things wrong with it:
It’s based on the 500, and therefore reliability is a crap shoot, and Fiat really needed to stop stretching this ‘retro’ theme to all its cars about ten years ago (remember when Fiat was Modernist? the Ritmo? the Bravo/Brava?)
and yeah, it should have been called Multipla. I have no idea what a 500X, 500C, 500L, 500R, 500S, are or how many of them are even real. Name soup garbage.
These are oddly popular in my area. I think there’s like three of them in a town of less than 15,000 people. And I don’t particularly dislike the idea behind it. Nothing wrong with maximizing space for a smallish footprint.
But I really don’t care for the styling. As others have said, stretching up the 500’s retro styling cues onto a MPV gives it a bloated, awkward look to my eyes. I think a design more unique to itself would have been a better option.
Fun fact, these were built in the Fiat plant in…Kragujevac, Serbia! Yup, you guessed it the home of Zastava aka as Yugo! Take this information as you will ????
The overall styling was lousy and branding it as a “500L” was a big miss, just made it seem like a fatter, less interesting “500”. But the split A pillar was brilliant.
You make a good argument, and you almost had me on side but, unfortunately, and there’s no good way to say this, I can’t get over the fact that it looks like a Fiat 500 for people with an inflation fetish.
Jason you are 100% correct and I signed up just to comment. We own one and my wife is the one who mostly drives it. We bought it in 2015 and it was a 2014 leftover. We became empty nesters and it was time to dump the minivan. We wanted a small wagon, which are hard to come by. I saw one on the road and knew it was the right car. First off it was inexpensive, which was nice. It’s roomy and fun to drive, especially at higher rpm’s. It does have a somewhat wonky automatic that shifts like a manual. It’s been very reliable and has taken us on several 2000+ road trips without a hitch. The large glass and panoramic sunroof make it bright and airy inside. SUVs are overpriced, ugly blobs, the 500L is just better. Keep in mind that I bought a Renault Alliance new, had a Subaru wagon in 1992, and I’ve owned two SAABs and two Mazda minivans, so my tastes aren’t normal, which is why I’m on this site.
At best these were a somewhat worse Kia Soul, and at worst, what happens when you cheaply follow the formula for the VW Golf. Just simply outclassed by better, more spacious, nicer driving cars for the same price or cheaper.
Wasn’t this car channeling 1970’s FIAT in all the worst ways? Crap engines, crap transmission and built with indifference? Looking like a marshmallow didn’t help either.
A cordial disagreement we have!
I was recently looking at these as a possible second car to go with my lovely little 500e. I’m with you all the way, Torch. I think it’s a nice design and they did a lot with it. Only about an inch longer than the 500X, but with around 2 inches more rear legroom, hip room and shoulder room. And 18 cubic feet more cargo room than the X! I think your assessment of “not too bad” is pretty solid. I just wish they’d put a bigger engine in it.
Looks are subjective but to me it’s just a cynical brand extension of the 500 that looks like it ate all the pies. I had one as a hire car in the U.K. once and it’s in my top 3 worst cars ever driven. It had the TwinAir 2 cylinder engine which is amazingly characterful in the 500 but buzzy and underpowered in the L and totally at odds with the rest of the car which was completely soft focus. The steering was vague, it had wallowy handling and the ride was so bad it’s one of only two cars that made my son physically car sick (the other was a 10 year old Kia Sedona being thrown round mountain passes in Colombia and the brand new 500L was being driven gently as I was paying for the fuel). And it wasn’t even very spacious.
Ok, aftermarket, but I may prefer the Beetle barista…
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/01/29/coffee-machine-volkswagen-beetle/
Isn’t this the one that was mechanically about the same as a Jeep… the little one, Renegade, maybe? And so buyers could choose between the goofy looking one or the Jeep-y looking one for about the same dough? And this being Murrca the Jeep-y looking one sold pretty well and the goofy-looking one didn’t?
Yes and no – they were on related platforms (Small Wide/Small Wide 4×4, both developed from SCCS), but the Fiat equivalent of the Renegade was the 500L on stilts, known as the 500X.
The 500X was kept alive longer than the 500L as a more America-friendly vehicle, but your main point stands – folks liked the Jeepy-looking one better 🙂
When you’re right, you’re right Torch. It makes for bad copy, but I have nothing to prove against your fundamentally sound statement.
I’m with Torch on this one; I thought it was a reasonably peppy car (drove one a few times at the Denver Auto Show between 2014-2016) that took corners well and had a decent amount of interior space for its footprint. It was also the only 500 that I could fit in. If it had sliding rear doors rather than swinging ones, probably would have been perfect for a bunch of folks.
On the other hand, I haven’t bought one either. Went with the Countryman since it came with AWD and a manual, and after that went to an older Outback XT with a manual.
I’m not gonna bother trying to prove you wrong, Torch, because you are absolutely right. The 500L gets an undeserved bad rap, and it is a brilliant little car.
In Europe, you could even get it with some seriously funky engines:
– The MultiJet II diesel, in two different displacements. Namely, 1.3 L, shared with more cars than I could reasonably list here, but notably including my other favorite Fiat oddity – the Qubo – and 1.6 L, which we also get in the Jeep Renegade! The former was offered with a so-absolutely-awful-it’s-endearing Dualogic automated manual, but you could spec them both with a proper stick (5-speed and 6-speed, respectively), making a brown manual diesel wagon a legitimate possibility!
– The 875 cc *two-cylinder* TwinAir, including a factory “Natural Power” CNG bi-fuel option. (The 1.4 L FIRE got LPG instead.)
And while the rest of the automotive world turns to one of Harman International’s many sub-brands for their audio needs, the 500L’s audio upgrade was powered by… wait for it… Beats. Say what you want about Fiat, but they know how to commit to the bit and lean into the weird.
Thanks Sparkington! Dualogic! That must be what we rented in Italy a few years back. The rental agent actually asked me, “You know how to drive automatic?” I was like, “Sure no problem.” I thought that was funny. But I was mystified. Its behavior was odd. Not sure I remember right: Maybe it was that every time I started the car, it reverted to manumatic? So I would wind it up every time to 30 kph in first gear and then decelerate in a lurching fashion while hunting for the manual shifter.
I’ve been on the receiving end of the “You know how to drive automatic?” question in Europe as well! In my case, it was a plain torque converter auto in a W168 A-Class, so it’s likely got more to do with the fact that many folks out there have never seen a PRNDL before than with the quirks of the Dualogic 🙂
But boy, does it have quirks. You’re right – while it shouldn’t default to manumatic unless broken, it’s very easy and intuitive to chuck it into manumatic every time because the toggle switch is marked D/M and that’s the only place you’ll see a D on the shifter – the position between N and R (where D actually is) is not marked!
That is the way to drive it if you ask me, though – in full auto mode, its shift points will always catch you by surprise and you won’t have time to let off the throttle, making for a lurching, surging shift every time. What’s more, if you don’t come to a complete stop when slowing down, it’ll stay in a high gear and take forever to kick down when you get back on the gas… It was kind of funny to have no throttle response in a normally very torquey diesel.
P. S. Now that I’m thinking more about my rental Bravo back in Serbia, which had this transmission, I also remembered the coolest thing about Fiats – the City Assist power steering. It makes parallel parking an absolute breeze.
Except for that whole “Least Reliable Vehicle” rating by Consumer Reports in 2015, they were a nice car.
Says the man with an Alfa Romeo logo as his profile picture…
If an Alfa owner thinks the 500 is too unreliable i have to think it is
Okay Dave…. that HURT …
????
The biggest problem is it being called a 500.
Fiat 500’s are supposed to be small.
By calling it a 500, they were forced to carry over design elements that simply did not work scaled up. This lead it to have weird proportions between the different elements.
They should have called something else. The carmaker is called FIAT, not FIAT 500.
Mini decided to name the current company after a model, they’re stuck, FIAT wasn’t.
I like this assessment.
The 500 is a great-looking little car (and I love how the Abarth sounds…could it be the best sounding-4cyl ever?) and the 124 Spider is just plain handsome. Too bad Fiat didn’t do the what the rest of Chrysler does and just stop there in terms of models.
These things are in a current Shell ad and they look just like a caricature fake vehicle created for a tv spot.
It took me a few viewings to realize no it’s an actual Fiat.
(and yeah, I always pay attention to gasoline company ads on tv these days as they’re so rare and b/c like the rest of us, Petroliana!)
My sister had one for a few years. I never liked the looks of it (made worse by the “Lounge” mid-level trim and it’s hideous multispoke wheels), but it was practical for her small family, and she loved the looks of it (she wanted a normal 500 but needed the extra space for her two kids). I’ll always have a soft spot for them because hers saved her life when an old woman in a Kia Forte decided to pull out in front of them on a highway. So, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but I think I’m with Torch on these.
No
Yeah, it did always strike me as a sort of modernized Multipla. Which is not a good thing.
I think the Multipla gets a bad rap. It’s weird, but weird in a logical way. Every oddball decision has reasoning behind it, so even though it looks weird you can potentially appreciate what they tried to do.
In one of the first car reviews I ever wrote, I gave this thing good marks. Listen: If you bought a Fiat 500L because of my story at Jalopnik, come find me someday. I’ll give you whatever cash is in my wallet or at least buy you a beer to apologize.
What if I didn’t buy one, but I’ve lost all respect from friends and family because I read your review and encouraged them to buy a 500L? Do I get the free beer?