Intersting post... You bought a new car and rather than post an honest, well balanced critique of it for your peers .. you give virtually zero details of what's good and bad about it and instead just complain about a TV commercial featuring a super hot chic?.. very interesting.

Didn't you test drive the car before you bought it? read the reviews? You say you've owned multiple MINI's yet .. here you are..with a car that for whatever reason you don't like and outraged as to FIAT hiring one of the biggest stars in the world to make people aware of their new product.. what a stupid idea THAT is.. what were they thinking? I'm sure there were probably hordes of really ugly, unknown celebrities they could have hired instead..

and just curious.. do you always pay this much attention to advertising?

 

 

Senor Wences ??? http://images.wikia.com/muppet/images/b/ba/Wences03.jpg

 

"IF" I had a FIAT, I would trade it in for JLo. Shoot, I'd mod my MINI's boot for her boot!

 

dat ... *** ...

OP, *ahem* ... I fully understood the stigma MINIs had when I bought one.

Problem: Most of my car buddies made fun of me for buying a "chick car" (they still do).

Solution: Challenge them to a weekend at the autocrosses.

Result: 2010 Impreza WRX STi +4 seconds, 2009 BMW 135i +3 seconds, 1998 Honda Civic (B16C "Type R" swap, full suspension, extreme perf. summer tires), +2 seconds. With the exception of a 17% pulley, tune, camber plates, bushings, and a rear sway bar, Lynne is bone-stock. I was on Hankook Ventus V12 Evos. She's my daily driver.

Honestly, I like the Fiat 500s. If the suspension's more compliant than a MINIs, I'd say it was a better city car.

If you care about things like "street cred", go swing your nuts around at an autocross and prove your mettle (hope you can drive!), otherwise, deal with it. You bought a "chick car," and you're offering to trade it for another "chick car."

Perhaps a Hummer H2 is in the cards?

 

The OP was making a tongue-in-cheek observation - and I agree with him.

MINI has mostly tried to keep their car uni-sex to prevent it only being sold to only 50% of the population, FIAT has made the terrible marketing error to alienate 50% of their buying audience by using J-Lo.

The sad fact is, most men are boneheads who think driving a car that girls also like means their they're not masculine enough. If men were more mature, it wouldn't be an issue, but since it is an issue, marketing people better get with the program if they want to increase sales (and that's the whole point of marketing: increasing sales).

Whomever FIAT hired, they need to fire immediately.

 

OK, # 6.. just to clarify... you think having a sexy woman as the focal point of this car ad infers that the company is targeting women only? That one went right over my head. I guess you could be right..

Perhaps it's just me, but before I read this post, I watched the ad half a dozen times and thought it was very cool.. Never once did it cross my confident, heterosexual mind that they were marketing to women or girly men...

I admit that I remember more about JLo's sexy legs than the car, but the ad definately got my attention which probably was their goal...I LOVE my MINI, but if I had a second choice for a car.. I'd go look at the Fiat...

 

I know I limit my beer choices to brands that do NOT feature bikini wearing ladies in their commercials, because those are obviously chick beers. All my friends would question my sexuality.

 

They are selling cars. The commercial is quite good. Are you sure that you conflicted about something else? They are just cars....

 

"A sexy woman as the focal point"? Way to miss the point.

This is not just another ad showing a "sexy woman". Beer commercials show sexy women but are clearly appealing to men.

An ad with J-Lo driving the car without question makes the car more feminine—she's the driver, not the passenger. This ad will turn away the average testosterone-driven male.

I am speaking from a marketing POV. For me personally, it wouldn't stop me from buying the car if it appealed to me. If MINI did the same ploy, I'd still buy the MINI.

 

I have to give a shout out to Nathan at Motoring Alliance MINI forum (apologies if it's verboten to give kudos to another forum), but he turned me on to a commentary on this article:

http://adage.com/article/news/franco...fiasco/230033/

The comments say it best...

"To put it bluntly... the campaign is just about the worst ad campaign for any car today. Said it here first http://salupmedia.blogspot.com/2011/...relevance.html. There is no way anyone in his sane mind would defend the JLO commercial..." —MARCELO SALUP
Corporate Management (CEO, CMO, COO, CFO)

 

Barely. No where near anticipated volume.

Don't like the car and like the commercial even less.

That is the end of the story. I don't think that most people are conflicted about anything.

They are just cars to YOU, to most of the folks on this forum car's are not just car's. There a way of life and a symbol of freedom and the American way. Speed, power and performance brother and sisters. The Fiat has none of those attributes.

 

REALLY?

I can think of a dozen cars right now that I would rather drive than the FIAT.

Let me see if I have this right.

Fiat = 101 HP
Fiat = 98 pounds-feet of torque
Fiat = 0 to 60 mph right at 10 seconds.

REALLY?

Wow!

 

Aww - the FIAT isn't that bad. With the top down, looks like a fun drive and it's not a bad looking car - definitely not as dull as the typical American or Japanese car. If the MINI didn't exist, I'd take it for a test drive.

And I think it can and might do well, I am seeing them here and there and I am betting most people these days have forgotten how horribly made FIATs used to be (let's hope they're better these days).

They only made a mistake with their advertising. And btw: they did fire the company behind the ill-conceived branding—well, sort of.

If I read the article correctly, the real brains behind the J-Lo fiasco still have their jobs unfortunately.

 

You must be looking at something different than me.
The specs alone make me look elsewhere.
I don't even make it to the looks of the vehicle.

The looks are secondary to me. I would rather drive a fast, decent handling car that is ugly than a slow car no matter HOW it looks and handles.

I don't understand the cachet for driving a slow good handling car.

 

For me personally, I am not hung up on speed. I needed a car to get from point A to point B. Driving was not a past-time for me.

And in the past, I would always choose reliability above all else, which is why I usually bought boring Japanese cars.

The MINI just happened to catch my eye. After researching it and then test driving it, it then convinced me to buy (a non-S, as I still care about reliability).

I still prefer the MINI over the FIAT (not even close in my book). But the FIAT has the potential to do very well. I think a large number of people are just bored to death with every car looking the same.

But as the saying goes: 'to each his own'

 

Touche'

 

'Cause some of us get our jollies when the road gets twisty, not when it's a straight line.

All of my cars after my first (an old Accord that my folks picked out and I bought) have been small, lightweight, modestly powered cars that handle well. I like cars like that.

In fact, at 120+ HP, Fenimore will be the most powerful car I've ever owned...

 

I understand that but 120 hp is better than 101 and lets face it you still have to have the power to accelerate in a reasonably quick manner in order to make those twisties fun. If I want straight line acceleration I drive my GTO, 400 Hp of go juice, that's straight line fun. But come on 101 Hp were talking about in the Fiat. The base Mini is 20 more. Big difference.

 

My current cars make 95 HP (probably a lot less now!) and about 105 lb-ft of torque, and 108 HP with 99 lb-ft of torque.

I found the 101 HP and 99 lb-ft of torque in the Fiat to be ... adequate. Except in 5th gear at 60 MPH with 3 people in the car. And even then, if the handling had been as good as the MINI, I would have very seriously considered it. If the handling had been on the order of the MINI's, and the ergonomics had been as good as the MINI's, I would have gotten the 500.

But the question I was answering was about low-powered cars that handled. And I like those. The original Mini was just like that, as were most mass-production sports cars in the 50s, when sports cars became popular.

 

I happened to come across the Papi music video, and now I can see where the FIAT's ad came from. FIAT had purchased product placement in the music video and pulled clips from it to stitch together an ad. The ad is fairly incomprehensible without having seen the video. Apparently it is known by millions, but I guess I'm too old to be tuned into pop culture.



Not that it makes the FiAT ad better. Now I have the darned tune stuck in my head.

 

Absolutely! Also in our stable is a '64 Porsche 356 SC Sunroof Coupe, which we've owned since '67. Amongst the 356 folks, there's a saying: it's harder to drive a slow car fast than fast car slow. And therein lies the challenge (and the fun). And yes, we've dusted off many a straight-line machine with lots more power...but no handling.

I just spent 2 days driving my MINI in a straight line--I-10 from Florida to Texas. I'm itching to drive 3090 now, which is a twisty highway a few miles west of my home. I'm also looking forward to MITO in 18 days--if you didn't know, MITO stands for MINIs In The Ozarks, and it promises to be 3 fun days of crooked highways in Arkansas.

 

The worst car commercial ever, ever, ever!!!
I was at some friends house watching the Niners vs Eagles game and the JLo commercial came on and a "car guy" friend (Mazda3 hatch owner) says out loud, "Hey Phil there is the the car that is the MINI's competition that you like." I says, Oh hell no and that JLo car is no comp for the MINI GP. I did actually like the car, but the whole hip hop dancing crap and JLo mis-marketing was embarrassment. It was not the female fashion accessory image of the 500 the commercial gave, it was the JLo image. All my friends know that I like Miatas, MINIs, GTI all chicks cars to most of them (most drive trucks) but I did not admit to them my "Like" of the Fiat, because of my disdain of the whole hippity hop dance dance fever JLo commercial. It really hit a nerve. This is my Rated PG-13 comment.

 

You gotta read the comment left on this article, http://adage.com/article/news/franco...fiasco/230033/ they are SPOT ON!!