I miss my manual cars.
I miss living somewhere with roads and speed limits that meant having a car with some performance is worthwhile. I have a Golf GTI but I trundle around at 30-40 all the time. Automatic, too, meh.
My old Ford Puma was a bit of a hairdressers car but it was fun.
I kinda enjoyed the turbo lag on my Peugeot 306 DTurbo, too (don’t buy French cars though, and not diseasels)
My last manual transmission was in my 94 Hilux. Before that I owned three manual Hondas (77 and 78 Accords and 81 Civic, all hatchbacks) and they were all fun. Had a 74 Super Beetle stick briefly as well. I’ve been meaning to put a T5 manual in my Cougar for decades now, but it still has the factory FMX 3-speed auto.
Next car I buy for me will be a stick. Maybe Fiat 500, maybe a Mini… maybe a Camaro or Challenger. I have paid my minivan and station wagon dues, goddammit.
I learned to drive in a '74 Renault 12L with a craptastic 4-speed. I’m now weirdly nostalgic for black vinyl upholstery and reeaallly loose shifters.
Reminds me of the 240Z with a blown 350.
My other car is a mid-80s Alfa Spider, and even with our low speed limits it is pretty fun to drive; being so low to the ground it always feels like I’m going twice as fast as I really am.
I had a Renault 18i that I loved when it worked, but it was in the shop 13 times its first year. I eventually replaced it with a FIAT that was far more reliable.
I rented a 500 just to see what it was like (I’ve owned several FIATS), it was fun to drive but the gas mileage (city) was under 20mpg, which is unforgiveable in a car that small. I was able to get 35 on the same streets in the Fit, and it also had better acceleration.
Was that the Abarth version?
No. The Abarth probably accelerates better and drinks more gas.
Well, yeah. Economy is not it’s main strength. Being madder than a hatful of cake, OTOH…
Bit out of my price range though. 
My old 1980 BMW 323i was nice, but in general: cars, meh.
If y’want quick, lose some wheels. My current one will do 0-100km/h in 3.8s, despite being an inexpensive and fuel efficient (around 3.5l/100km) practical commuter. Corners like a razor, too.
Apples and oranges. Looks like fun though.
Be aware that Fiat 500s are pretty much at the bottom of the heap for reliability. But if you could somehow get Yugo or Trabant to ramp up production again Fiat might look better by comparison.
Yeesh indeed! I didn’t know they did that, well, terrible thing.
I bet they’re selling more now. Sigh.
The Outback’s slow morph is a classic example of car bloat, but even the Honda Accord suffers from that. A '77 Accord was a rather small car, while today’s model is bigger and heavier than a '57 Chevy Bel Air.
Are they? Damn. I’d thought Fiat had finally shed that reputation. My sister used to have a late 60s Fiat that spent far more time busted than running, even with a dedicated parts car.
I mean, I don’t expect Toyota levels of reliability from Fiat, but neither do I want to have to take it in very often, no matter how cute it is.
That’s ridiculous! [Goes and looks at photo of Chevy Bel Air]
Okay, I can see that.
We have a Mazda 5, which is referred to as a mini-minivan. It is, of course, about the size of the Chevy Astro when it was first trotted out to the world, it’s just that all the other minivans are now huge.
Yes, my take too. But it might be a hard problem to fix as I think it all through.
Well, since there’s like a thousand of them and they’re insanely priced, I’m pretty sure they’ve thought of a fix and it won’t be that difficult to do.
Now, if there were, say, ten million of them on the roads, that would be different. But this is a small market whose clientele probably has a tight relationship with their dealer in the first place. I mean, the owners might have to drive the BMW for a few days instead, but it won’t be that hard to do.
As an engineering person, I think the post is interesting because people have no idea how much detail goes into engineering a product like a car. Every single part, even the screws, have to be sourced, made sure they work properly, and just even some little “screw up” like this (pun intended) shows how amazing it is that engineering products work so well most of the time.
VW failed Porsche on the 914/6.
I loved driving them. I would not at all consider the car itself a failure.
Next time you fly remember the words of my good friend, an executive at a company that makes commercial jet airliner parts: “It is a miracle airplanes do not fall out of the sky daily.”
