Summer in London can be chest clampingly claustrophobic. If the sun’s out, swarms of people get vomited onto pavements by café’s and bars. Traffic clogs; tempers fray. Sit in a jam in something big and powerful and there’s a twings of frustration at not being able to move, followed inevitably by a cringe when you heave in a thick, traffic-stained breath and realize that you’re exactly the kind of person that makes the air smell of evaporating thinners and burnt toast.
Self-righteous, car-free Londoners, who think the only places worth visiting in the universe are all connected by the Tube, manage to sneer so violently that it looks like they’re about to sneeze.
Don’t’ worry. According to most ‘environmentally aware’ Londoners drinking Pimm’s in Hyde Park, if you’re in a car capable of expressway speed you are, in their estimation, a complete knob.
But tonight there’s a sense that in a long list of potential targets here in central London, we have become the least. Looking back at our shrunken convoy, I can see why. It’s decent turnout of very modern ad space efficient metal: the tiny, insectoid Mitsubishi I leads the faintly gormless-but-happy new Fiat 500, followed closely by a couple of more familiar shapes in the form of the latest-generation Mini One and the recently re-launched Smart For Two.
So no doubt then, that these are all smallish townabouts with more than little of the I want, rather than the I need about them. But that’s exactly what we’re here to do – to see whether personality can subjugate practicality for the time it takes you to sign on the dotted line. Let’s face it, there are more rational cars out there; fiat’s own Panda or Ford’s Fiesta hatch among them, these are cars that offer similar practical experiences for less cash. So these friendly little, er, ‘transport solutions’ have to seduce your wallet by making a play for your heart, instead of for your head. In this caricature urban setting complete with bumper-to-bumper traffic and the occasional lazy horn toot, they do. Two cars get by far the most attention from the cafe crowds; the i and the 500 - the i getting quizzical looks, the 500 getting broad grins and even a couple of Nuova Topolino! shouts as we cruise around town. A technically incorrect exclamation, but it's quite encouraging nonetheless. The friendly gesticulating could undoubtedly continue, but the 500 soon gets left behind when a bus pops out and sucks up a gap that the Smart has just slipped through, neatly demonstrating the difference between the two types of car we have here.
Don't be fooled by the supermini tag of the 500 or the Mini, the i and the Smart compress city miles by burrowing through gaps that the other two find hard to negotiate. Both rely on small, rear-mounted, three-cylinder engines and rear-wheel drive to get their superb packaging; the Smart with its new 84bhp 1.0-litre and five-speed semi-automatic gearbox, the i with a 64bhp 698cc and pure automatic. Both have the kind of Artful Dodger street confidence that makes them a joy, and wheels pushed so far into their extremities that they could well drive up a vertical wall. But it's the Smart, and not the 500 or the Mini, that loses out when faced with something like the i.
Yes, you can still park a Smart at 90 degrees to the kerb - even though this new one is 55mm longer - but London is littered with meters, so unless you have a Smart mate who parks in the same place every day to cosy up to, that's not so much of an advantage. It doesn't like potholes or speed bumps, where the longer wheelbase of the i makes them less of a big deal and, of course, it seats only two bums instead of the Mitsubishi's generous room for four. And I do mean generous.
The Smart is, however, a hell of a lot more grown-up than before. It rides better than the old one, is built better and has more space. And it is still 50 per cent easier to park than anything on sale, because you get the feeling you always know where the corners are - so squeezing into that last tiny space doesn't require insane levels of bumper scuffing. You can see why Smarts are so popular in Rome (at one point there were 30,000 Smarts in Italy's capital alone - more than in the whole of the UK). More relaxed parking regulations and a traditional lack of large-means good ego makes the Smart the city car of choice. Until now, it's been the nearest thing Romans could get to a 'new' 500, and proved so success that Banca di Roma even did finance deals for new owners and displayed Smarts inside their banks.
Strangely, the Mitsubishi shows the Smart a clean pair of heels on any given urban traverse, simply because the tiny Kei-class (K-class) car from Japan is so damn narrow - narrow is key to making progress in a city. Although it looks like a four-door Smart from the side, the i is actually 84mm slimmer - doesn't sound like much but you'll be amazed at the gaps you find yourself wiggling into. The steering is exceptionally quick giving you instant duck-and-dive and a turntable turning circle. This, in comparison to an arm-twirling turning event in the Smart that I assume stops you lobbing the two-seater onto its roof if the stability control hasn't got time to catch up.
Add to that a proper, lurch-free automatic gearbox in the Mitsubishi and I reckon you can knock 15 minutes off whatever commute you care to mention with minimal stress. The Smart still suffers from an initial fuzziness to the semi-auto clutch uptake that results in a bit of first gear lurching about - not great when a city car spends lots of time moving off. There's a fair bit of head nodding in the other gears, too. The Smart does have a nicer interior though - the Mitsubishi's feels cheap and about as cutting edge as Barry Manilow in MC Hammer parachute trousers. But on almost every other front, the Smart feels outclassed. That hurts - I bought one of the original Smarts, but the game has moved on.
That becomes obvious as soon as the Mini and the 500 manage to catch up on a brief stretch of dual carriageway on our way out of town. These days you can have character and breadth of ability in even the smallest cars in the range, and to be fair you have to be in fairly heavy traffic for a while to really feel the advantages of cars like the Smart and the Mitsu i. So it feels much more conventional when you step into either the Mini or the 500 - but that's not necessarily the end of the story. Like the more committed townies, these other two are remarkably similar; both have front-mounted, 1.4-litre, four-cylinder engines driving the front wheels with roughly 100bhp and six-speed manual gearboxes.
The Mini is our litmus, and climbing into the circular-themed cabin feels like coming home mainly because I bought an old Cooper S after the Smart, so I've owned one of these, too. It's gotten just a little better in this latest generation without losing the charm. You sit low, connected, but there's a highly suspicious lack of standard equipment in the Mini One's dark cabin. That low ambient light level isn't helped by the fact it feels narrow across the windscreen and window-line - real gunslit stuff when you bail straight our of either a Smart or a 500. It also feels a good bit broader across the beam compared to either of the townies, so the nippiness is all relative.
As we move from town to slightly more open roads it's apparent that the Mini is actually the best drive here. The 94bhp 1.4-lirre needs far too much revving in town and is surprisingly easy to stall - not to mention it physically isn't anywhere near small enough to be cheeky in the parking stakes but when you get a chance to stretch its legs the Mini shines. Great steering, brilliant suspension with a hint of lift-off oversteer when you're battering about on a deserted roundabout - it comes to life with just a little bit of room to play. In fact, the Mini comes to life when the Mitsubishi and the Smart are ploughing their own understeery little furrow at some random oblique from the nearest roundabout.
The big surprise is Fiat's 500. And no, I haven't had one of these, but the next person who says that it looks like a girl's car gets a punch in the face. I know it's almost comically non-aggressive, and I know it'll be bought by more women than men (or that's what Fiat thinks) - bur you don't have to know your way around a salon by touch to drive one. The criticism that the Mini and the 500 use painfully retro pastiche is almost valid until you realise that past a certain age point nobody remembers the original Mini or 500, so it's all new to that section of the buying public. The rest have fond memories - so is it really a major problem to anyone outside the motoring industry? Probably not. The Smart and the i may be more modern, but it doesn't necessarily make them any more appealing.
It's true that by driving the 500 you reduce any macho tendencies - it's very hard to play the tough guy in a pearlescent white supermini - but there's nothing flimsy about the way the 500 performs. Around town, the 500 can't quite match the smaller cars for nip and tuck, but it gets along pretty well. The gearshift is great, neat and in just the right place, the clutch perhaps a little too light when in comparison to the Mini's superbly weighted controls. There's also a 'Sport' button on the dash that weights up the steering and sharpens the throttle response.
It sounds really good - a hint of rasp in the upper reaches - revving just as sweetly as the Mini, and giving it an extremely close run for its money on country lanes. Look past that odd, lobotomised stare and it rums out that the 500 is an extremely perky car to drive quickly - though I'd still prefer to sit lower. It's no wolf in sheep's clothing, but it's at least a snappy Border collie done up as a toy poodle. Also, where the Mini is dark and slightly last-season inside, the 500 is pure goodness. The swathe of body-coloured dash is near perfect. The technical tweed in our test car looked and felt great (cloth seats are the law in small cars), and the detailing is spot on.
It's worth noting that this white car is a 100bhp 'Lounge' spec 500, with all the bells and climate controlling whistles, but, like the Panda, even the lower-spec 'Pop' version comes with a generous dollop of kit, the 'Sport' sitting somewhere between. Will the 500's strong retro look date? Probably. But not soon, and not quickly.
As we sweep out of town, we quickly realise that neither of the tiny cars really 'do' the bits between the 'burbs. The i is plain wobbly - the speedy steering and lack of track making it wander and get bullied by wedges of displaced air - and this makes it unrelaxing in the extreme. Kickdown is also not a thing you wish to use more than once if you have any mechanical sympathy. The Smart is much better, the things that worked against it in town - slow steering and wider track - making it a surprisingly comfy cruiser. The fact remains that more words are required to justify it. 'Surprisingly comfortable for a city car' invariably pops out.
The i is a brilliantly engineered, right-to-the-point vehicle - but its poor interior, motorway manners and a decent price tag mean that it's an urban commuter-only car. A bloody good one (the four seats and width advantage really count), but not charming enough to sell more than the 300 Mitsubishi plans to shift in the UK.
With a nod to some sort of practical advantage, both the Mini and the 500 cope admirably with even long stretches of motorway driving. Neither of them ducks under the UK's fairly formidable tax barriers like the Mitsubishi or the Smart (though the diesel versions do), but the truth is that they manage town nearly as well as the smaller cars and still manage to make you smile on a motorway or B-road. The city cars lose too much and gain too little in being so focused you really need another car for longer journeys, which is kinda missing the point.
So, it's a straight choice; Italy or Germany? Really, there isn't one. Spec a Mini and you're adding to a standing price without options of £11,625 (Rs 9.5 lakh). If the 500 hits the streets with a £1,500 (Rs 1.21akh) premium over the Panda as expected and has similar spec - the Mini will be the more money than sense option. Add to that the fact that the Mini simply isn’t as cool as the 500 in this fashion microsecond, and you're already on the phone to Fiat.
The new 500 is good at everything important and looks fantastic. It feels modern and is well priced. And it has flair, and character and - er, dare I say it? - soul. All this bodes well for the proposed Abarth version which should be a little more, ahem, aggressive. Surely you remember what happened when the first version of the new Mini arrived a few years back? Expect the same again. But this time with a Fiat badge.