Cinque in my armour

Making a pilgrimage in a modern classic.

The buildings I was so intimate with are being broken down. The familiar four-letter logo in blue has been painted over; in its place are in-your-face four-letter logos of an infrastructure builder.

A part of my personal history — and that of many, many others — is disappearing brick by brick under the brutal hammers of hardened labourers. Security guards shoo away the car which would have once been welcomed without question.

I thought I would walk around the premises and reminisce about the place. Upset, I ask my colleague Pablo to get back into the car and drive off. I don’t think I’ll ever visit Fiat’s erstwhile plant in Kurla again.

During my advertising days when I used to handle the Fiat account (the Uno was the rage then), by the time I was through with my late evening meetings, all the lights were usually put off. So I used to grope all the way from a remote cabin to the entrance of the main building, tracing the walls and the staircase railings with my fingers as if I were blind.

As a motoring journalist, I have spent innumerable hours at the Fiat factory, either waiting to pick up a test car or return one, attending meetings and driving around in the plant premises in a to-be-launched model. Where in heaven would you find an automotive manufacturing plant in the heart of a metro? Well, we can tell our grandchildren that Mumbai once had one.

Depressed though I was, the situation couldn’t have been more apt. I planned to drive the 500 from the old plant to the new one, and there could be no better way to illustrate the changes that the Italian carmaker has been through globally.

And the car I was driving exemplified it best. You see, the Fiat 500 you see here is no ordinary car, it is not a mere fashionable, clever, retro-looking model. It is a lifesaver, the car that brought Fiat back from the brink. The automaker put everything that it got into developing this car, no effort was spared. In a way, the birth of the new 500 was in fact the reincarnation of Fiat.

I shift gears and head towards the highway that would lead me to my destination: the spanking new Fiat plant that’s coming up at Ranjangaon near Pune. Heads turn and other cars slow down as they see this little runabout on Mumbai streets. It does that to people, even those who have no clue about its legendary predecessor, which 50 years back, redefined personal mobility in Italy. Yes, the same thing that the Nano is expected to do in India.

The new 500 is a dead-ringer for the old one, only it’s bigger. It’s got all the right design cues and elements that evoke the 1957 Nuova 500. It is irresistibly cute to look at, and my regret is that I am inside the car and not outside as a passer-by to see how incongruous yet refreshing it looks on our roads.

The challenge for Fiat, of course, was to make a modern iteration of the original, yet ensure it meets today’s — and the future’s — demands of safety and emissions legislation. The miracle is that it does, and how.

The stubby bonnet that you see is a classic example. It defines the 500’s retro looks, but shoehorning an engine in that tight bay and yet making it meet pedestrian impact tests is nothing less than a superb feat of automotive engineering. The new 500’s predecessor, of course, didn’t have that problem as it was rear-engined.

The fact that Fiat managed to fit a diesel engine in there is even more amazing. Credit for that, however, should go not to the Fiat Style Centre, but to the engineers who developed that little oil-burner in the first place. It’s a very familiar motor, the same one that powers the Palio, Swift and Dzire now, and soon, a bunch of new Tata, Suzuki and Fiat cars as well.

An award-winning motor, the 1.3 Multijet is a marvel of miniature engineering, yet does not compromise on refinement either. Displacing 1248cc, this four-cylinder 16-valve turbocharged engine develops 75 bhp at 4000 rpm and 14.8 kgm of torque at just 1500 revs. Paired to this engine is a five-speed manual gearbox that transfers power to the front wheels.

When put to the test, the 500 1.3 Multijet comes up with the 60 kph mark in 6.1 seconds, 100 kph in 14.8 seconds and attains a top speed of 162.1 kph. It’s mid-range is pretty good, dismissing the 80 to 120 kph dash in 11.9 seconds.

The overall timings are better than the similarly-engined Palio diesel, but measuring its performance in mere units of time is belittling the car. Its predecessor was timeless, and this one, modern though it may be, is already heading towards becoming a cult classic.

Please understand, I tend to hate retro cars, they are the easy way out for manufacturers to raise quick money. But this one is different, this one’s got spirit.

Cruising on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, you’d never realise there’s an oil-burner up front. Though you can hear the diesel engine idling outside the car, inside, it is brilliantly insulated and you can barely make out the vibes and noise typical of diesel engines.

It may not be an out-and-out driver’s car, that’s the prerogative of the Abarth-tuned 500s. Still, this 500 has some outstanding aspects when it comes to driving. It cruises at 120 kph, with the tacho needle poised at the 3000 rpm mark and you could do this all day.

And on the four-lane highway to Ranjangaon, it revels in its sweet spot; offering immense flexibility between 80 and 100 kph, with the tacho needle hovering between 2000 and 2500 rpm.

The engine’s torque band is flat, which means that when you keep the revs between 1500 and 3500 rpm, it pulls in any gear effortlessly, and that makes driving it either on the highway or on the road stress-free. That’s the marvel of the engine. The five-speed gearbox too is a slick shifter, it falls in place positively and the throws are smooth and short.

Enroute Ranjangaon, I enter Pune to meet the members of the Fiat Classic Car Club of India, the keepers of the flame in the country, so to speak. So passionate are these individuals that if their respective wives/girlfriends allowed them, they would tattoo the Fiat brand on various parts of their body.

In just a day’s notice, eight Fiats of different eras assembled to hang out with the new kid on the block. That too, on a weekday — office and work be damned! The club members of course drool all over the car and much banter about Fiats is exchanged.

When a hardcore bunch of classic Fiat lovers give the 500 the thumbs-up, my impression that the car is more than a retro model gets confirmed.

The car’s perfect dimensions and very flexible powertrain means that it makes short work of Pune’s terrible traffic conditions. The 500 has a cute black button on the dash that tightens the steering feel when you want it (let’s say, on the highway) and loosens it for city conditions. It is a killer feature, and I wish BMWs in India had them. I of course want more feedback from my steering, so I don’t put it in the easy city mode even when tightly manoeuvring between Pune’s motley machines.

Still the steering feel of the 500 is not something I am fond of. Another issue I have with the car is the pedal placement. It is set too high and by the time you’ve notched up a 100 kilometres, you need to give your feet a break.

It’s dusk, and when I put on the lights of the car, the beauty of the instrument panel hits me. The dash of course is painted plastic, designed to resemble the painted metal ones of the past. But the instrument console is a work of art. It contains all the information you require, looks completely 1950s, yet is high-tech. At the touch of a button, a superb trip computer and a digital display throw up more data than you’ll ever need.

We hit the road again, towards Ranjangaon. The 500 makes short work of the traffic on the four-lane highway. I keep the engine on the boil and thread my way between slow-moving trucks and other denizens of the road.

The classic Fiat ride quality, I am happy to report, is present in this car. The independent McPherson setup at front with transverse lower wishbones gives the car good driving precision as well, while the torsion axle at the rear does a good job of keeping the rough stuff on the road away from you.

The car swallows the kilometres effortlessly and soon, I am in front of the new Fiat plant where work is feverishly taking place. This plant will churn out Lineas and Grande Puntos, but not the 500, which is being completely imported.

At Rs 15 lakh, the 500 is terribly expensive and available at only six dealerships in India. It’s just a halo car to re-establish the New Fiat brand in the country. They couldn’t have chosen a more perfect model, contemporary yet nostalgic.

The mandatory photograph taken, I ask Pablo to get in the car, and we hit the road again. I didn’t have to dwell much, as it is just another state-of-the-art car plant.