I'm happy to see your review mirrors the experience I had by renting one. I couldn't understand all the hate for the 9spd as it worked flawlessly in my rental.
I'm guessing that FCA thinks that buyers who want the top trim level are least likely to need the 4WD system and the manual gearbox. So they will get all the luxury goodies and keep the car where it belongs--on the urban/suburban runabout mission. This really should be the Fiat that North Americans want, and FCA needs to step up the marketing campaign.
Both the 9 speed or the dual clutch six speed that sells in Europe, are sequential gearboxes. Meaning, they do work on Manual. The only difference is that with a sequential, we can only control the clutch indirectly. The rest is exactly the same. I don't get the point of so many asking for the manual option. It is also a shame that they decided not to sell the 1.4 on all trim levels, as it is the better unit for this car due to the fact that it provides more power in low and mid rpms ....and that shows on the clock if you look at the figures.
+hillsje Below are the ten brands with the most engine problems. A striking fact is mainly to see how many cars in ratio ( 1 X ) is registered with frame.Merk - Failure Rate (%) - Failure Rate (1 in x)1. MG Rover - 7.88% - 1 in 13 2. Audi - 3.71% - 1 in 27 3. MINI - 2.51% - 1 in 40 4. Saab - 2.49% - 1 in 40 5. Vauxhall (Opel, red-) - 2.46% - 1 in 41 6. Peugeot - 2.26% - 1 in 44 7. BMW - 2.20% - 1 in 45 8. Renault - 2.13% - 1 in 46 9. Volkswagen - 1.91% - 1 in 52 10. Mitsubishi - 1.70% - 1 in 59 And then the best guys in the class. Among the ten brands that are the least frequently sought out a garage for motor troubles is , not surprisingly , a Japanese party. Honda is one with only one engine problem car on the 344. A stark contrast to the one in 27 Audi or one in 40 of MINI . Mercedes saves the Germanic honor somewhat with a third place . Merk - Failure Rate (%) - Failure Rate (1 in x)1. Honda - 0.29% - 1 in 344 2. Toyota - 0.58% - 1 in 171 3. Mercedes-Benz - 0.84% - 1 in 119 4. Volvo - 0.90% - 1 in 111 5. Jaguar - 0.98% - 1 in 103 6. Lexus - 0.99% - 1 in 101 7. Fiat - 1.17% - 1 in 85 8. Ford - 1.25% - 1 in 80 9. Nissan - 1.32% - 1 in 76 10. Land Rover - 1.38% - 1 in 72
+Herc Zeus The 9-speed is not made by Chrysler, it is made by the German transmission company ZF. I'm sure they are making changes to the production of this unit as it has been in the market for over two years now. It worked very well in the 500X.
Motormouth Canada They would have to be logically making changes of course. But that still doesn't really help those early adopters with the 9 speed tranny in their vehicle. I do feel sorry for those people.
At 3:20-3:25 the B-pillar plastic liner is misfit. At first I thought that the seatbelt is caught behind the gray plastic, but it seems this is how it is supposed to look. Well, looks rather bad from that angle.
As he eludes to in the video, if the 9 speed is anything like the jerky unit found in the new Cherokee I'd avoid it. I was about to buy a new Trailhawk but after a family member left their cherokee with me for 2 weeks while they were on vacation over the xmas holidays, I changed my mind and bought a different vehicle last week. It seems to hunt for gears, downshifts at the wrong time and with the engine stop/start feature made few clunks that I thought for sure were catastrophic. Check out the Jeep Cherokee Club forums to see all the people having failures and getting them replaced plus all the software updates for them to try and cure the issues. I think it will be a while until they work out the kinks with that one. Its too bad, its otherwise a pretty nice vehicle. As for this Fiat, it looks nice but I just went through the pricing and wow it adds up fast! And the financing rates are sky high. I really don't get that, when the original 500 was released the dealer here in the west end of Ottawa had tacked on a 10k (or around there) "dealer markup fee", thinking these would be the next Mini. I don't think they sold any, who was going to pay a 10k markup on a 25k car?To this day they have a pile of these things sitting around and I hardly see any on the road. I think they need to entice some customers into their showrooms and they won't get that buy charging 5.99% interest for financing. Anyway, not taking anything away from your review. I enjoy watching them and its nice to have quality Canadian reviews out there. Keep it up!
I know right? I first saw the 500X and Renegade and I really liked it. It looked different and to me it has a youthful appearance. I then looked at the mechanics. I don't know if the Renegade/500X is going to be reliable five years down the road. The 9-speed auto made me question FCA's decision to do that. Far too many gears, 6-speed auto is fine enough but 9-speed auto? You're asking way too much. It's all basically for fuel economy! The price as well factored in, plus the resale value! Unfortunately this is a 👎👎👎
