FIAT GOES TOPLESS

ABOVE: A spin in the 500C will be a real treat

NOT surprisingly I needed to prove that I’m just a normal bloke the other weekend.

Well, what fella wouldn’t if he had to drive around in that most girly of girly cars, a Fiat 500C?

I thought I’d do a real lad’s thing – no, not go to the pub and get leathered – go to a top football match. And while I was there I’d check out the progress of young Rooney.

Apparently this boy is quite a prospect. A real star of the future. So I stepped into my little Fiat and set off for the 200 mile trip up north from my new and sumptuous driveway in Essex.

Now, the one thing I need to say immediately about the Fiat 500C (the C stands for convertible) is that if you’ve got a substantial collection of stamps in your album – those are the ones that show how much speeding tax you’ve paid – then it’s a great little car.

And my album, which the courts prefer to call a driving licence, has got pretty much a full set in it right now, so I don’t need any more.

It’s not that the 500C is slow, far from it. Even the smallest engined version that I drove, a 1.2-litre petrol job, is a surprisingly capable motorway cruiser.

No, what’s good about the Fiat 500, in any form, is that nobody expects you to drive like Jenson Button.

The first thing I noticed that was different about the 500C wasn’t its roof, but its boot.

Despite its size you can actually fit a full-size wheelie bin into a normal Fiat 500. To get it into the 500C you’d have to chop it up first (the bin that is).

It’s not that there’s much less luggage space as there is in the standard car, it’s because there’s a retractable cloth roof where the normal car has a rear window so Fiat have had to abandon the idea of it being a hatchback.

Instead there’s a really small entrance to the luggage area and that makes it extremely awkward to load in chunky items like a golf bag and trolley, though I did manage after a struggle.

Anyway, let’s get going on this journey to see our star, and while the 500C doesn’t react well to bumpy country lanes, where it bounces around, it’s absolutely fine on normal surfaces.

It has well weighted steering with a dashboard button to make it ridiculously light in car parks and it handles perfectly capably, though that’s unlikely to be tried out by the legions of ladies who will lust after one.

Despite my ugly looking licence I settled for 80mph on the motorways, but that’s probably a genuine 75 or 76mph, as you’ll find out if you buy a sat nav, and I doubt if even the blue revenue collectors will do you for being 6mph over the 70mph limit.

At that speed it’s turning an effortless 3,500rpm, is still averaging 45mpg and is reasonably quiet until you come to those roads where the locals are calling for the concrete surface to be replaced with proper Tarmac.

Then the noise level is such that I switched off the radio. No wonder people hate that concrete stuff. You really notice the difference when you get back on a decent surface.

The roof is superb. It slides all the way back and then some more, down the back of the car.

If you try to open the boot with it fully lowered you can’t. It stays locked until the roof raises itself out of the way, then it unlocks itself.

Anyway, I finally got to the match and the reports were correct. At just 18, Wayne Rooney’s younger brother John has already scored twice this season and looks well composed, sitting just behind Macclesfield Town’s main attack.

Well, you didn’t think I’d watch Man United, did you?

» MORE 'MOTORING' HERE...

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