Most liked posts in thread: Fiat 500, no threat at all

But wiil they send, the new Peugeot 208 GTi

 

rrr:

 

OK now divide how many Fiat dealers there were into total sales and how many Mini dealers there were the first year into their sales?

I know there was only one BMW dealership that could sell Mini Coopers in NC, SC and VA combined the first year...

It would also be interesting to see what each spent in advertising the first year, to get a advertising cost per unit sold figure?

 

I see something funny here. This thread is MINI owners finding nothing good about Fiat and there is another thread where MINI owners are blasting MINI's as being not worth the price. Go figure. :lol:

Jim

 

Uh huh... It's all pretty in the pictures... Keeping it running is whole other ball game!

 

So as long as they are more reliable than they were back in the 60's and 70's we are good? :confused5:

Take a snapshot of cars on the road...

Have you noticed how quickly GM and Dodge products really start looking like hell? It is almost immediate. They just don't build stuff that holds up, especially cosmetically. Ford tends to be better, which is why they survived. Their trucks also helped. I wish the bailouts would never have occurred because I would have loved to have seen what would have stepped up to fill in the void. As it sits, they are still here, still cranking out crap, all on our dime.

The French and the Italians have NEVER been known for their reliable cars. Italian cars tend to have gorgeous designs, but are finicky, at best, on the reliability front.

The Fiat looks like a cute, little fuzzy creature... A Tribble, so to speak. I would never own one. They are way too girly for me. No amount of modding would make that car look masculine enough for me to want it in my garage. No, I am not homophobic. I just like a car that doesn't look like something Barbie would have in her Dream House garage...

The French, well, ugly and unreliable? There is a reason they stopped selling them here... Nobody wanted them or their headaches. I am sure they have improved, but how much? Even if they are 50% better than they were, that is still dismally unreliable.

The Japanese have been, for the most part, reliable to the extreme, but most of their designs lack anything one would call exciting or awe inspiring... They tend to be very vanilla and very "safe" in their designs.

The Germans are somewhere in the middle. German cars tend to be very reliable so long as you maintain them. Once you stop, they tend to break. Then they are expensive to fix once they do.

Their styling is usually very well done, well thought out, and well executed. They used to have very bad paint back in the 80's, but they have really improved on that front.

MINI's are definitely in this camp. BMW created something that is almost a perfect balance that can be tipped however the owner wishes. They can be as cute or as aggressive as you want them to be, and it works.

This is something FIAT will not have until they quit making little bulbous, cute, fuzzy bunny cars. Their numbers were still almost 10K shy of the MINI's opening numbers. And they had over 10 years to study and to come up with something to compete with MINI.

They failed. BIG TIME. And the guy running the show over there screwed up. It is good to be the king, because if that would have been any other person, they would currently be unemployed.

 

I guess I should put my nomex on, because to be honest folks the MINI is cute fuzzy bunny car. I see nothing wrong with that. It is fast like a bunny & turns corners & stops like one too. What is not to like?

 

Not true. The MINI CAN be a cute and fuzzy bunny car... But it can also be a lean, mean racing machine.

I don't care how many body and aero kits they come out with for that FIAT, it will never look mean... It'll be a bunny with teeth... Reminds of the great Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie and the killer rabbit. Might be bad ass, but it'll still be a bunny.

There is an excellent ad for the FIAT 500 Abarth where there is a hot woman :drool fixing her stocking and catches a guy looking. She eventually turns into the FIAT... Which they then show sliding around a corner. It looks like a fuzzy bunny sliding around a corner. It doesn't look bad ass, even on the heels of a stunningly beautiful woman. Not even a little... And I am not discounting the handling, which I am sure is fine... It just looks like a girl's car.

Not a woman's car, a girl's car.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpi2IAec9Ho"]The Ad[/ame]

 

I have to agree with Johngo here......after sitting in a 500 I cannot see how they can make this car look mean at all? Yea the Abarth looks better, but with the dimensions of the car....it just does not look right....if you know what I mean? I mean the track on it is only 2.5" less than a MINI, but being almost 5" taller really kills it. :idea:

 

Actually, the Miata's are great cars to drive... I would consider one.

Charger, no way. Chrysler junk. Sorry.

MM, you are missin' a link, bro!

 

Weird.... It's showing up on Forumrunner and my office PC.....

 

It's there now... WWW = World Wide Weird...

 

I would be all over the Scirocco R !

......and don't forget the Volvo C30R :drool

 

The first Scirocco I saw was moving, and I had no clue what it was... I finally found one parked and was able to walk around it. Things are mean looking.

 

I have not. My second car was an '82 Rabbit and I loved that car. MINI has taken over the top spot from it and my BMW 330ci, tho.

My biggest thing with the VW is how much they want for the things... They quit being the "car of the people" sometime in the early '90s...

 

I just saw this quote on an article about Best Buy by Larry Downes and thought it was fitting:

As the head of a major automobile company told me at the dawn of Internet commerce, “Sooner or later, the last stupid customer will walk in the door.”

Seems like "sooner or later" is now.