Senior Editor Greg Migliore reports from the first drive of the 2016 Fiat 500X in Southern California.
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GREG MIGLIORE: Hey, everyone. It's Greg Migliore. I'm on location in Beverly Hills, California, where the skies are blue, and there's plenty of sunshine. I'm here to drive the 2016 Fiat 500X, which is the new crossover that Fiat's adding to its lineup in hopes of adding more customers, getting more mainstream buyers.
I jumped on the Santa Monica Expressway out in Culver City, where I promptly edged past an older Toyota Camry, merged on, and then I ran into a traffic jam, which is pretty expected here. But the brakes are good, so that's a good feature of the car.
Went up and cruised along the Pacific Coast Highway, its iconic Highway One, one of America's most famous roads. The Fiat makes a statement, so it fit in well on this stretch of road.
Jumped up on Mulholland Highway and pushed it through the twisty roads, some of the S's, some of the really tight curves and turns, and the chassis responded well.
This is a chassis you would know from the Jeep Renegade, which is a new product for FCA, and it was good. It handled everything I through at it. The 2.4 liter inline-four with 180 horsepower and the nine-speed automatic were pretty good powertrain pairing.
The nine-speed's a little jumpy at times. I still think there's some issues with that. At one point, it actually clunked into gear when I was accelerating on the Pacific Coast Highway, but otherwise, it's a nice product.
I think the whole point of it is it gives Fiat sort of a style move, even more so than some of its other cars. It's a vehicle that a lot of Americans are going to look at and think, hey, this fits my lifestyle.
You could fit five people in it. There's room to put stuff in the back. And it drives like a normal car. The crossover feel is definitely evident, and it was an interesting drive. I think it fit in well in California. The question now becomes, will the rest of America like it? We'll see.
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