Boomer23
Well-known member
Just drive a 500e at the Costa Mesa dealer. Cute, fairly nicely finished inside, under-instrumented, weak regen with no B mode to increase regen, nice handling, good head room.
But OMG the torque steer!! The car is sporty enough that you naturally want to punch it coming out of corners. But hang on! The thing lunges to the left, you compensate with steering input, back off a tad and it lunges right! In fact, if i recall correctly, it might have darted left and right without my having actually backed off the throttle. Reviews mention the torque steer and some say the EV version has more of it than some of the ICE versions. But this would be unacceptable to me. Really, a deal breaker. And no, it's not that I can't handle a little torque steer, it just flat felt dangerous!
And it killed the driving fun because the car goes where it wants to when you punch it from slow speeds. Above 30 mph or so, it's not bad at all, but coming out of a quick right turn, watch out! That's attention-getting, but not the kind of driving fun I'm looking for.
I was very happy to get back in my 2013 LEAF. I drove my car over the same route and it felt like it handled every bit as well as the Fiat, but of course the LEAF had no torque steer at all.
By the way, if you really want one, this dealer says he sometimes sells them to people not on his list if the color or equipment don't match his list people's preferences or if they don't call him back.
But OMG the torque steer!! The car is sporty enough that you naturally want to punch it coming out of corners. But hang on! The thing lunges to the left, you compensate with steering input, back off a tad and it lunges right! In fact, if i recall correctly, it might have darted left and right without my having actually backed off the throttle. Reviews mention the torque steer and some say the EV version has more of it than some of the ICE versions. But this would be unacceptable to me. Really, a deal breaker. And no, it's not that I can't handle a little torque steer, it just flat felt dangerous!
And it killed the driving fun because the car goes where it wants to when you punch it from slow speeds. Above 30 mph or so, it's not bad at all, but coming out of a quick right turn, watch out! That's attention-getting, but not the kind of driving fun I'm looking for.
I was very happy to get back in my 2013 LEAF. I drove my car over the same route and it felt like it handled every bit as well as the Fiat, but of course the LEAF had no torque steer at all.
By the way, if you really want one, this dealer says he sometimes sells them to people not on his list if the color or equipment don't match his list people's preferences or if they don't call him back.