Fiat 500 Hybrid

Fiat bucks the trend with petrol-based version of its electric city car

- Richard Ingram

WE didn't think we'd see the day, in 2025, when we'd be driving a brand-new car fitted with a petrol engine and a six-speed manual gearbox. Alas, with little more than a month before the year is out, that time has come. In the face of stagnating EV demand, Fiat has found a way to shoehorn its mild-hybrid three-cylinder 'Firefly' motor into the previously electric-only 500 supermini.

It's no simple task, and the brand's designers and engineers have spent the past 20 months adapting the 500's EV platform to cater for this powertrain. The engine bay is tight; Fiat's European chief, Gaetano Thorel, told us that anything bigger than the compact Firefly 1.0-litre simply wouldn't fit.

On paper, the headline numbers are laughable. Lifting its powertrain from the Italian-market Pandina city car, the 500 Hybrid gets just 64bhp and a paltry 92Nm of torque. Fiat claims the 0-62mph sprint takes 16.2 seconds; the open-top Cabrio extends this to a scarcely believable 17.3 seconds. No turbochargers here - just a very mild-hybrid system fed by a 12-volt starter generator.

But the Fiat board of management insists this car isn't about stoplight drag races or Broad blasts. To see whether this new version warrants a place in the fashionable 500 range, we travelled to the Italian firm's home town of Turin to battle the traffic and test the petrol-powered city car's mettle.

The first thing you notice is weight of the controls. As with the electric 500e, the steering is so light you can change lanes or bay park with your little finger. But here, that feeling extends to the clutch pedal and the gearshift, which falls easily to hand and pops neatly into place with each throw. It's not the slickest transmission, but with so few new cars offering a manual these days, we're not complaining.