2013 Fiat 500c Abarth on 2040-cars

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Fiat previews production 500X on Melfi assembly line

The Fiat assembly plant in Melfi, Italy, may not be one that appears on our radar that often. It's been in operation since 1993, but until recently only built the Punto - a model that's been around in its current form with few modifications for the better part of a decade, but hasn't warranted the transatlantic voyage to American showrooms. Fiat recently added to the Punto assembly line in Melfi the production of the new Jeep Renegade, but that's not all.
Soon the Renegade (which you can see being built in the background of the image above) will spawn the 500X, a small crossover based on the same platform but with what you can see will be a more rounded shape. Replacing the Sedici (a.k.a. SX4) that was jointly developed with Suzuki, the 500X will join the Cinquecento family alongside the 500 hatch, 500C convertible and 500L minivan, the latter on whose design we hope the 500X will prove a marked improvement.
Expect the 500X (or so it's expected to be called) to be revealed on July 4, which will mark not only the 238th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence but also the 57th anniversary of the original 500's debut.

2015 Fiat 500 Abarth automatic targets broader appeal

There aren't many manual-transmission-only offerings on the US market, and now there's one fewer. The 2015 Fiat 500 Abarth has just gone into production with a newly available automatic option.
We've known that the hair-raising, high-performance Cinquecento has been scheduled to get a two-pedal setup for some time, but now we have more specifics on the gearbox itself. According to Fiat, the six-speed automatic is derived from the same Aisin unit used in the standard 500, but it's been substantially reengineered to cope with the 1.4-liter MultiAir turbo engine's added power. Allison Singer, a vehicle integration engineer on the 500 Abarth's development program tells Autoblog that the modifications to the gearbox include "gears that have been reinforced and a few extra clutch plates," among other changes. Unfortunately, there are no paddle shifters, as the 500's steering wheel was not designed to accommodate them, but at least there's a +/- manual gate on the gearshift lever.
Interestingly, the automatic brings with it substantially different power numbers than its manual counterpart. The new model receives 157 horsepower and 183 pound-feet of torque, which is 3 horsepower less than the manual, yet it packs a whopping 13 pound-feet more torque, which should aid drivability. By comparison, the five-speed manual 2015 Abarth registers 160 hp and up to 170 lb-ft. New features that come with the auto include a dedicated sport mode, rev-matched downshifts, fuel-cut upshifts, shift logic that holds gears in corners and 'fast-off' situations, along with sharper throttle tuning. Despite the added torque, Singer admits that "The manual will probably be a tiny bit quicker as far as performance goes," but she is confident that the transmission's availability will open the car up to a much broader market of buyers.

Share price falls on skepticism of Chrysler-Fiat five-year plan

Following this week's Fiat Chrysler extravaganza, where the Italian-American manufacturer announced its plans for the next five years, the Autoblog staff was cautiously optimistic of the company's future. Investors? Not so much.
Fiat saw its shares tumble 12 percent in Wednesday's trading, falling from 8.67 euros ($12.06 at today's rates) to 7.44 euros ($10.35) as of this writing, with blame partly going to the Italian half of the FCA marriage, which recorded a pretty significant drop in profits during the first quarter of this year.
The plan, which will cost around $77 billion over the next several years, is facing criticism from investors thanks in part to a 1.4-percent drop in Fiat's first-quarter profits, to 622 million euros ($862 million). That figure is also short of Bloomberg analysts' projections, which predicted $1.18 billion in profits before taxes, interest and one-time items.