Italy Road Trip! Cruising in a Fiat 500L

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Parking can be an adventure and requires creativity along with a lack of care for body panels. Another tip, always have coins to pay for parking in case the machines don’t take credit. Also, credit card machines in Europe require the chip. 

 

Here’s the small muffler tucked up in the rear. I guess it's for those situations where you have to back up over a stair case. The rear suspension is just a beam axle. 

 

As with all modern cars, there’s a big engine cover. 

 

Underneath the panel in the cover, you can see the black plastic air box and the heat shielding over the turbocharger. And the oil cap. And that’s about it. 

 

Some of the roads suck, so the taller sidewall tires help smooth out the ride a bit. They can help with reducing curb rash when doing some creative parking too. The brakes are on the small side, so I don’t recommend hauling ass down any mountains. 

 

3 comments

  1. Great article, thank you so much. I’ll have a 500L for five days to explore the Piedmont a little, using Turin as a base. Some very useful information, will look forward to learning how to double clutch shift.

  2. Thanks for the tips.
    I’m debating between a 500L and a diesel Clio. We’ll be driving from Salerno to Palermo in July of 2019. We are 2 people with luggage.

  3. The Clio will be more sporty for sure. Looking at the pics, the rear hatch may not be big enough to hold your luggage, so you’ll likely have to put them in the back seats which just means you might not want to stay parked long anywhere with the luggage in view. That’s a heck of a drive you have planned!

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