Jeremy Clarkson: Fiat 500X a silly lesson in motor marketing

The Fiat 500X has loose steering, a sudden clutch and sharp brakes. At times it drives like a stoned tortoise.

The 500X is aimed at estate agents who’ve met a client, got married and had children.

I wouldn’t enjoy working in marketing very much because when you go home after a hard day’s thinking, you have absolutely no idea whether your endeavours were successful or not.

You may have dreamt up the most brilliant sponsorship deal or product placement, but did it have any effect at all on sales? There’s no way of knowing.

I bet you any money that the man in the polo-necked jumper and thin glasses was given an immediate pay rise and keys to the executive lavatory after he managed to do the deal for the Philips logo to crop up time and again in various James Bond films. But did that have an impact on sales? Not in my house.

What about Robinsons Barley Water? If it were removed from the umpire’s chair at Wimbledon, would there be gallons of the stuff sitting around undrunk in warehouses?

We see a lot of marketing in the world of cars and we have no idea whether it works. Audi’s “Vorsprung durch Technik” campaign was hailed as a triumph, but since it stopped being read out at the end of the TV ads, sales have skyrocketed. It’s much the same at Ford. In the olden days Ford spent a fortune on racing and dominated sales charts. Today it does much less motorsport, which means, er ... it still dominates sales.

Enzo Ferrari used to say that if you won a race on a Sunday afternoon you made a sale on a Monday morning. And everyone nodded sagely. But if that were true, Ferrari wouldn’t have sold a single car for two years, and, let’s see now, it has sold loads. Mostly to James May.

All of which brings me to Fiat. Several years ago it made a cheeky little homage to the original 500 and decided — after a great deal of market research, I should imagine — to call it the 500. It sold like hot cakes. In Britain alone 200,000 estate agents have bought one.

Ford obviously thought this runaway success had something to do with the actual car, so it launched its own version, the second-generation Ka. Nobody wanted one. This must have caused Fiat to think that the success of its 500 had something to do with the name it had given it. So when it decided to make a people carrier, it called it the 500 too.

Then it decided to make a trendy, city-based European version of the rugged, all-American Jeep Renegade. Well, after many meetings and a lot of espresso, Fiat has decided that it should be called the 500 as well.

There was a time when Fiat gave all its cars different names. You had the Panda, the Strada, the Stilo, the Croma, the X1/9 and so on. But now, to keep things simple, everything is called the 500, whether it’s a hatchback, lorry, sportscar or an off-roader. I wonder how long it will be before La Stampa, the Fiat-owned newspaper, is relaunched as La 500.

Anyway, back to the latest 500, which is badged with an X. This is an internationally recognised symbol to tell onlookers the car has four-wheel drive. But in the 500X that isn’t necessarily so. All-wheel drive is just an option. So it’s not a 500 and it’s not a 500X either.

It’s probably best we strip away all the marketing nonsense and concentrate on the car. It shares its basic architecture with the Jeep, but the two cars are very dissimilar. The Renegade may have grown up a bit, but it’s still the only car that actually shows up on a man’s gaydar. The Fiat, on the other hand, is aimed at estate agents who’ve met a client, got married and had children. So they need something with a bit of space in the back and a proper boot.

Hmm. And why would these 30-something bods and boddesses buy a Fiat that is made by Italians out of American components, rather than, say, a nice ’n’ sensible Nissan or Skoda?

Well, here’s something strange. In recent years Fiats seem to have stopped grinding to a halt in a cloud of steam when they are three minutes old. New figures suggest they are pretty reliable. That’s one thing. The next is: it doesn’t feel even remotely as though it’s made out of George Michael’s chaps.

In essence it’s a five-door hatch that looks quite good, in an unthreatening way. It’s also good value when you look at the long list of standard equipment.

And yet I didn’t like it very much. Part of the problem was that I was driving around in a car that was called a 500 but so plainly wasn’t. That’s a bit like me deciding to call myself Brad Pitt. I could, but you wouldn’t be fooled for very long.

Then there’s my natural aversion to this sort of car. The Mini Countryman, the Nissan Kumquat and so on. I can’t see why you would need the ground clearance or the extra headroom.

The main reason I didn’t much care for the Fiat: it was deeply uninspiring to drive. The ride was poor, the steering was loose, the clutch was sudden and the brakes were so sharp that pulling up gently was nigh-on impossible.

Then there was a switch on the centre console that made everything worse. Turn it to the left and the steering got heavier, which seemed fairly pointless. Turn it to the right and the car pulled away from a junction as though it had suddenly become a tortoise with some kind of cannabis addiction.

If you really want to say at parties you drive a 500, there’s a better plan. Buy a Skoda Yeti, then simply remove the badge and screw a Fiat logo to the boot.

Fiat 500X 1.4 MultiAir Cross: Small SUV

Engine: 1.4-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol

Outputs: 104kW at 5000rpm and 230Nm at 1750rpm

Transmission: Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive

Average fuel economy: 6.0 litres per 100km

Price: £18,595 ($38,500, TBA Australia)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Verdict: If this is a 500, then I’m a Dutch Brad Pitt