Car Throttle

One of the stars of this year's Frankfurt Motor Show was the smallest car there, the Volkswagen Up. This is VW's latest city car replacing the old Fox and challenging rivals such as the Ford Ka, Fiat 500 and Citroen C1. The big news now though is that Volkswagen have made a GT version of the Up that promises to bring back the spirit of the Mk 1 Golf GTI, a small, fast and cheap hot hatch. This little VW comes with wider front grille to help more air get to the engine which promises to produce around 100bhp. Attached to each side of the wider front grille are cooling ducts which have the job of keeping the brakes chilled and also house the LED daytime

Do you want a retro-styled hatchback with some turbo thrust, but the idea of a Cooper S makes you uncomfortable?  Well, if you're in the US, you'll finally have a choice early next year.  Fiat released two images of the US-specification Fiat 500 Abarth today ahead of the car's official debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November.  If you're familiar with Fiat's European lineup, this won't be a surprise.  If you're a fan of the 500 in the US (such as myself) but were waiting for one with more power, the wait is nearly over. The Abarth show car Fiat is sending over is black.  Very black.  Black paint, black wheels, black tint - oh, and red racing stripes and mirror caps.  It turns

I liked the Fiat 500 Sport quite a bit.  And that was with 101bhp.  It's a fun little car, with Italian flare, enough cute to make a Mini puke, and a fun little chassis that likes the curves.  How much more fun would the 500 be with oh, say, triple the horsepower?  I'd bet a lot.  I want to drive one. This is the Fiat 500 Abarth Stradale, built by Romeo Ferraris.  It's a road-legal version of their 360-horsepower Abarth race car, complete with a carbon-fiber widebody kit that gives it a striking resemblence to everyone's favorite Sith Lord. While the Abarth race car makes a ridiculous 360bhp from 1.4L, it's toned down a bit for the road going version - with 300bhp.  Romeo

I tested a Fiat 500 Sport about a month ago, and with a few reservations, I loved it.  Cute, characterful, fun to drive, well-equipped, efficient, reasonably priced; I've been extolling it's virtues to everyone that'll listen since then.  Fiat's only been back in the US now for a matter of months, but they've already added a second model to their lineup: the 500C.  As the name would suggest, it's a convertible - sort of.  So what's different?  How does it work?  And how does it compare to the 500 hard-top?   Read on to find out. The biggest difference between the 500 and the 500C is obviously the roof.  While a normal 500 has a metal roof and a hatchback, think of the 500C as having

Y'know, I really like the Fiat 500. It's cuter than Alyson Hannigan, it sips fuel at a glacial rate, and it's a lot of fun to toss around back roads.  It's also reasonably priced, well equipped, and has a lot of character.  What it doesn't have: an engine behind the rear seat, powering the rear wheels, allowing you to drift it like some sort of Italian Camaro.  While I never really thought this was an issue when I reviewed it, Motore Centrale in Monza, Italy decided that was the way it should be, and went about rectifying the situation. What they wound up with was this: the Motore Centrale R230 Stradale.  It still uses the Abarth-fettled 1.4L Multiair Turbo engine, only... well, it's sitting

Continuing along with the rest of the new stuff at NYIAS this year, welcome to Part 2 of our "best of the rest" coverage, a sort of all-at-once splurt of information to keep you up to date on the latest developments, without boring you to death with new paint colors for the Kia Optima.  Here we go. 2012 Subaru Impreza Sedan/Hatchback Subaru has finally come to their senses with the Impreza.  While it's always been a relatively fun-to-drive car even in non-turbocharged form, it hasn't really experienced great sales in the economy-car market compared to more conventional rivals.  The biggest reason would be the big-car fuel economy in a small, unrefined package.  The current Impreza 2.5i makes a fairly impressive 173bhp from it's single-cam 2.5L horizontally

Ok, let's get one thing out of the way first: the Fiat 500, by American standards, is small. Very small, in fact.  The only shorter vehicle on sale here is the Smart ForTwo, which isn't actually a real car.  The US-spec 500 is 6 inches shorter than a standard Mini, 2.2 inches narrower, 3.2" taller, and the wheelbase is 6.5" shorter.  These dimensions are hard to wrap your head around for Americans; we're just not used to cars this small.  Which might be why the Smart has sold so poorly here (or because it tops out at 90mph, has the directional stability of a Chihuahua on Red Bull, has no cruise control, and takes 14.5 seconds to hit sixty.)  Just the sight of a car

Italian coachbuilder and stylist Zagato has a long history with Fiat. They've rebodied plenty of Fiats in their time, and at the Geneva show Zagato showed off the latest collaboration between the two brands: the Fiat 500 Coupe Zagato. From the windowline down, the Coupe Zagato is standard 500.  But Zagato restyled the upper half of the car to be more of a slick-back coupe and less of a hatchback, and the styling blends surprisingly well.  It has a touch of Renault Megane Coupe about the rear side glass, but it's a very nice styling exercise. The famous Zagato double-bubble roof (which is there to allow clearance for race helmets) works very well here, and the way the roof blends into a spoiler is a slick

I'm so excited about the Fiat 500, I can hardly sleep at night. Alright, that might be an exaggeration - but I love small sporting hatchbacks, and the 500 Abarth will be the first real challenge to the US throne of "blown mini hatch" since the Mini hit our shores early in the last decade.  While the turbocharged version of the 500 won't be arriving at the same time the normal slow versions will, it's good to know there will be aftermarket support when it gets here. Novitec, the German tuner known for strapping superchargers to Ferraris (still a concept I find odd in a lot of ways!) has gotten it's hands on the little turbo Fiat, and the result seems like a lot of fun. 

In a move that shows their clear intentions, Chrysler has started designating new franchises for the FIAT brand in the USA. The initial list of new dealerships selling the Italian brand included dealerships in New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Maine. Now the list is increasing to other parts of the country. Some dealers who closed their doors during the ‘08/’09 crisis are happy to take the FIAT brand. One former Saturn dealer in Florida is happy to hang the Italian logo where GM’s forgotten import fighters were once sold. It seems that Chrysler is doing its best to avoid the mistakes made by FIAT in the US in the 70s and 80s. Back then the Turin brand did not have a dedicated dealership basis, instead the