Make A Date With Ritmo
Illawarra Mercury
Saturday August 2, 2008
Fiat's Ritmo transcends cheap and cheerful and has styling bordering on sultry. BRENT DAVISON has a fling with a stylish, sporty Italian.
Ritmo. It's Italian for rhythm. Has Fiat's latest small car arrival got rhythm? Well, kinda, but it has a lot more going for it in terms of sex appeal and if you met it in a singles bar you would probably ask it out on a date. Yes, in a class dominated by anonymous boxes Ritmo stands out with its pouting mouth, seductive forward styling and well-rounded rump. It is not all form over function though because Ritmo has an interior roomy enough for five at a pinch, four in comfort and even the rear legroom is suitable for people taller than kids. Should you want to add a bit of luggage there is 400 litres of boot space at your disposal that can be boosted to almost 1200 litres if the back seat is folded. There is even a fair degree of cleverness under the bonnet where there is a petite 1.4-litre, four-cylinder with an intercooled turbocharger attached and twin overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder getting the fuel in and the gas out. The 1.4 Turbo is good for 110-kW of power at 5500rpm and a handy 230Nm of torque at 3000rpm. Connected to a six-speed manual transmission, it gives the Fiat the snappy kind of performance it might need to flick around Rome or Turin before blasting along a favourite autostrada. Or getting caught in Sydney's gridlock and crawling towards the nearest freeway heading out of town. Fiat's little engine isn't too shabby, quickly spinning-up to its rev peak when the throttle is floored and delivering without any sign of turbo lag. If you want extra sharpness try the "Sport" button, which changes the engine's electronic mapping and increases the urgency a little. If there is anything holding it back it is the six-speed transmission, which has ratios that seem quite tall to the point where trying to be lazy and run in a higher cog has the thing bogging down until the revs rise to a point where the powertrain can catch up with itself. It is gutsy and quick while returning reasonable fuel economy figures. Official figures give it a 7.1 litres/100km average. We managed a slightly less-thrifty 8.5 litres/100km. The six-speeder is a sweet little thing, light and accurate and mated to a clutch that is quick and short of travel. About the only complaint is that the shifter is heavily spring-loaded towards the third-fourth plane and can be wrong-slotted by inattentive drivers. When it does come time to give the Ritmo a serious punt it is well up to the job, courtesy of a chassis that is quite tight. The suspension on our Sport model was not high tech, with its independent MacPherson strut front end and a torsion beam rear axle located by telescopic dampers and an anti-roll bar. The ride is firm on good surfaces, bordering on harsh on the not-so-good and not really helped by big (17x7-inch) alloy wheels wearing 225/45 tyres.Ritmo Sport is a fun drive with well-balanced and nicely weighted steering that is pin sharp and blindingly accurate and a comprehensive chassis electronics package that works without being intrusive.Braking is by four reasonably big discs and they can pull the 1275kg to stop quickly and without fade after repeated use. Sport in Fiatspeak means playing dress-up rather than doing anything terribly major. Compared to the Emotion model the car gets bigger wheels and tyres, a full body kit, leather steering wheel with matching gear lever and handbrake, sports instrument graphics and alloy pedals. The A-pillars either side of the windscreen are thick enough to block sight lines on right turns. What did not go down well was the main instrument treatment. They might be big and they might be well-placed but the colour scheme - light-grey graphics on a dark-grey background - is hard to read in good light, impossible to read in bad light and only any good at night when the lights make the numerals glow a visible red. If Ritmo Sport has a downside it is in its pricing. A small hatchback for $33,000 is high in comparison to some rivals. Or is it simply that sultry Italians are just a bit more financially demanding?
© 2008 Illawarra Mercury