Please Fiat, don’t do a Mini!

Actually the “rejuvenation of a classic” as the article puts it really isn’t is it?
The Fiat 500, BMW Mini and VW Beetle are completely different machines owing more to modern smaller car design than to their original namesakes.

What we really have is the inclusion of a few design cues from a bygone age used as a marketing ploy to sell more cars.
The new Fiat 500’s, Mini’s and Beetles are not necessarily bad cars but they are not what the marketeers would like us to think they are. It almost seems modern designers have run out of ideas and feel a need to employ a retro approach to give the cars buyer appeal.

And the size of the things?
These “new” versions have definitely been given a few steroids. I saw an original Mini the other day in a car park, tiny. Likewise stand next to an old Ford Capri or a Vauxhall Viva, and these were midsize cars in their day, but they seem very small in comparison with modern midsize vehicles.

Modern cars are technically head and shoulders above older cars to the point of expensive over complexity. It’s only our our rose tinted (and possibly inaccurate) view of the past that prompts todays car manufacturers to resurrect the names.

By all means make good reliable, comfortable, safe and economical cars but look forward rather than backward.
The Mini I owned back in the 1970’s was prone to dissolve every time it rained, was always breaking down, was deafeningly noisy inside and very uncomfortable. Absolute junk so what on earth makes BMW think I’d be tempted by the name Mini, even though I know the modern version is a completely different species.
Should have called it the BMW compact or something and left out the Mini design cues. Might have one on the drive had they done so.

I watched the video and then watched it again to confirm that I had heard that the Fiat 500 is a reliable car. It is the first time I have ever heard of a Fiat being described as reliable, and hopefully it will not be the last.

I do not really care whether manufacturers resurrect old names, and I cannot see this as having much bearing on whether I would consider buying a car.

I understand Chris Gloucester’s point about looking at the past with rose-tinted spectacles. My first car was a Renault 4 with the gear stick at the dashboard, no seat-belts at the back, one-speed windscreen wipers, airbags? what are they? god knows how efficient the engine is, etc.

However, the look of it had character, like the old Beetle, Mini, Cinquecento, and Deux-Chevaux. Nowadays, I struggle to recognise one make from another, never mind one model from another. I know, one word, aerodynamics. I can’t argue against it, but I will argue against utter aesthetic blandness and sameness.