Used Fiat 500X Review (2015-2024)

There’s only so long you can keep squeezing four people into a Fiat 500. If you’ve outgrown Fiat’s iconic city car, the logical upgrade is the Fiat 500X. The Fat 500, perhaps.

In its slightly bloated design, you can clearly see the main styling features of the 500. But it’s spawned a pair of extra doors to make access to the rear seats easier. The boot is also bigger, although that’s hardly saying much when a matchbox offers a similar amount of luggage space to the 500.

The 500X has been around long enough that there are bargain bin models with high mileage, while Fiat boosted the car in its later years with a mild-hybrid engine and an increasing amount of technology. However, for the price of a newer 500X, you can get a much more modern-feeling and talented SUV – as you’ll see if you look through our guide to best used SUVs for under £15,000.

Fiat’s offering feels cheap inside, with lots of hollow plastics and evidence of cost-cutting. It’s also not particularly practical for its size – there’s only just enough space for four adults, and the boot is a bit smaller than the likes of the Skoda Kamiq and Peugeot 2008.

At low speeds, automatic 500X models can feel a bit dim-witted, while on the motorway it’s clear that the 500X is better on slower roads – it’s a bit noisy and the ride is always a bit jiggly. You can probably overlook this if you’re spending, say £8,000, but our test car was double that price and, again, you can get a car with a far more refined driving experience for that money.

The 500X shares its coloured dashboard insert with the regular 500, so you’ll get a nice pop of colour inside the car if you pick a bright shade for the outside. Sport models swap this for a moody grey metallic piece for a bit of trim, which is also quite nice.

The rest of the interior doesn’t have the charm of the 500, but it’s functional and laid out to be easy to use.

Fiat’s Uconnect touchscreen is a bit small by modern standards, and it features a lot of information so it’s busy and the icons are hard to hit while driving. Once it’s initially loaded, the screen responds quickly enough. There’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so you can use your phone’s apps on the screen, if you prefer.

Struggling to find buttons to control the music and media playback? They’re on the back of the steering wheel!

The quality of the materials and how they’re put together is a little flaky. The cover over the steering wheel flexed and moved a lot when we pressed the start button and the stalks feel insubstantial. In Sport-trimmed cars, the steering wheel is part plastic and part cheap suede, and the change in texture isn’t particularly nice while you’re turning the wheel. You’ll notice further cost-cutting where the cutouts for grab handles are – because the grab handles themselves aren’t fitted.

All this makes the super squidgy door armrests even more surprising. They feel like stress balls; maybe they’re good for relieving the stress of a traffic jam.

Compared to the 500, the 500X feels like a mansion. Compared to most other small family cars, the 500X feels like a bedsit.

With an average-height adult up front, there’s only just for another average-height adult to sit behind them. Tall passengers will have an unpleasant time. Headroom’s merely okay, while three people sitting across the rear bench will feel very cramped indeed. Your front passenger doesn’t get height adjustment.

If you’re carrying kids, the doors open fairly wide and the Isofix points aren’t too difficult to find, so it’s reasonably easy to fit a child seat. An upside of the particularly cheap-feeling rear materials is that they’ll be easy to wipe clean when your younglings spread their mess around.

Rear-seat features extend to a USB socket, an overhead light and one seatback pocket. Up front, the storage spaces entail two gloveboxes, decent-sized door bins and a small hidden area under the centre armrest.

While it’s about double the size of the boot in the 500, the 500X’s 350-litre space is towards the bottom of the small SUV class. It’ll be enough for a couple of suitcases or a few fully packed shopping bags, but might not be enough for a large pushchair or a large Ikea haul. There’s quite a pronounced slope in the floor when the rear seats are folded.

Fiat has refreshed the 500X’s engine lineup a couple of times; older versions came with a 1.4-litre ‘MultiAir’ petrol engine or a 1.6-litre ‘MultiJet’ diesel. Four-wheel drive was available but rare – and probably unnecessary, we’d expect, because the 500X isn’t going to get very far off-road.

More recent models feature a 1.0-litre ‘FireFly’ petrol engine, a more powerful 1.3 engine hooked up to an automatic gearbox, or the much more expensive 1.5-litre mild-hybrid.

The auto on the 1.3 is yawningly slow to react; the 1.5 auto is less so but can still get caught out when you decide you want full power. It also flat-out refused to shift down when we took manual control, so you’ll have to leave it to its own devices.

All three petrol engines offer reasonable performance and economy, without excelling in either. The 1.0-litre hits 0-62mph in 11 seconds and promises 42mpg, while the auto-equipped cars both do 0-62mph in about 9.5 seconds. Neither feels that fast in reality, but you won’t be holding up traffic when getting up to speed. The hybrid promises 49mpg, which is about the same as a Ford Puma with an automatic gearbox, and it’ll do low-speed manoeuvring on electric power.

With quite quick steering, the 500X feels fairly sporty to drive. Unfortunately, that also extends to its jiggly ride.

The 500X doesn’t get the 500’s ‘city steering’ mode that makes manoeuvring easier, but it’s still no issue to drive around town. All-round visibility is decent enough, and the 500X’s compact footprint and standard-fit parking sensors help in tight spaces.

Get up to motorway speeds and you’ll notice a lot of noise, not only from the wind and the tyres but from the other vehicles around you. It could become tiring on regular long journeys.