While on the Austrian Wine Summit tour a few weeks ago, we spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Loisium in Langenlois (more info about the Loisium hotel, spa, and museum can be found here) while we visited vineyards, wineries, and winemakers in the area. During our stay I got a few shots of this Fiat Cincquecento "Cup" car from MS Design in the parking lot.
From what I could gather from the website, the mods to this car are primarily to the body pieces, but I don't know that it would effectively be a lot faster than what you can buy off the showroom floor in Europe. Then again, the website says that it's intended "for young and sportily adjusted drivers" so who knows - maybe there's some suspension work that could be done.
I definitely like the looks of it (I'm not young, but still consider myself "sportily adjusted"), and what with the Fiat 500 still being rather a rarity in the USA, I enjoyed seeing even the basic Cinquecento as we traveled around Austria. In fact, several days after seeing the Cup Fiat in Langenlois, we were in Veinna and had to rent a car to visit some wineries outside of Vienna (Weingut Markus Huber and Johanneshof Reinisch) and after doing a little research on the web, found that Sixt Car Rentals had an office at the Westbahnhof, a short walk from our hotel. I was quite pleased when they informed me that not only did they have a Cincquecento available for hire, but that it had been delivered just the night before and that it had a mere 26 kilometers on the odometer. Having recently rented a Kia in Northern California with about 36,000+ miles on it, I was extremely appreciative of having the opportunity to drive a brand new car.
The Fiat was just big enough to hold our luggage as we checked out of one hotel and headed off to the other, and after eventually finding our way onto the correct autobahn, we made our way to Reichersdorf in Traisental. The car lacked the aerodynamic styling of the Cup car but aerodynamic benefits probably wouldn't have made a lot of difference in this relatively low powered car. We never obstructed traffic (I knew to keep far to the right except while passing) and while we were passed by any number of VWs, Peogeots, Audis and even a Ford Mustang, the mighty 500 held its own on the no-speed limit highway (I've gotta admit that I was really bemoaning the fact that I didn't have my VW R32 with me!) The roads were relatively flat and even, so we never really had to tax the engine too much climbing (slowly) over mountain passes.
Our roundtrip to Traisental and then down to Gumpoldskirchen and back to Vienna was about 240 km and we never really got about 140 kph, but it felt like we were moving right along. There were some sections of the trip where there were some severe crosswinds so I took it pretty easy but I'd suspect that if I were to drive this car regularly that I'd get used to its handling pretty quickly. The instruments were easy to read, the radio and AC/heat controls more intuitive than most, and it was incredibly easy to park in tight spots in Vienna. Gas mileage was pretty good and other than the lack of a lot of power, it was quite a fun car to drive for the day. It would definitely be on my short list for consideration as a commuter car if I lived in a city where parking was an issue.
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