• Unusually lofty driving position
• Compact body surprisingly practical
• Boot is small but well-shaped

How much space is there?

The Fiat 500 isn’t a family car. But while rear seat space is compact and the boot is small – which often means thinking carefully about what you’re planning to carry, especially when children and shopping trips are involved – we have managed to get adults in the back. Which for a car this small is remarkable.

There’s also not only plenty of space for two child seats in the rear, which can be Isofix mounted, but we’ve also found it’s possible to stand in the footwell behind the front seats while belting them in. Smaller infants in rear-facing travel systems can be loaded though the boot, if you’re tall enough (we’ve done this very thing on multiple occasions).

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Head and leg room up front are acceptable but, the 500’s seats are mounted quite high. This is popular with shorter drivers, as it gives you a surprisingly commanding view of the road ahead, which can promote a feeling of safety. But if you’re much over six feet tall you may have the converse issue of having to duck slightly to see a decent way ahead.

Boot space and storage

The 500 has a 185-litre boot, which is 66 litres less than the diminutive Volkswagen Up used to offer. It’s also 70 litres smaller than that of the Kia Picanto. In other words: tiny. While not impossible to find a folding pushchair small enough to fit, you will have to go looking very carefully. And probably won’t be able to put much else in the boot at the same time.

There’s not much cabin storage, either. The door bins are quite narrow, the cupholders small and shallow (which means anything put in them tends to fall over – make sure the lid is on tight), and there isn’t anywhere safe to store your phone. Which is a problem since we prefer using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in here over the built-in infotainment system.

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We found you can sometimes jam the phone into the rear cupholders. But otherwise you’ll end up either leaving your phone on the passenger seat or, if someone’s sitting there, they’ll need to hold it for you or be careful not to tread on it as it rattles around in the footwell. That’s not ideal if you’ve just spent £1,000 on the latest handset.

Is it easy to park?

Very. It’s one of the smallest cars on UK roads, so we’ve never had any problems zipping it around tight multistorey carparks or cramped city streets. It only measures 3,571mm long and 1,893mm wide – and Fiat offers parking sensors if you want them.

Rival city cars such as the Kia Picanto and Toyota Aygo X are available with reversing cameras. You can’t have this tech on the 500, but we don’t think you really need it. The 500 has large windows, flat sides and short overhangs, which makes it easy to judge where the corners are when parking.

That tall driving position pays dividends when manoeuvring at low speeds around town. Because you’re sitting up high looking down on the road, you can easily spot and avoid potholes. You’re almost at eye-level with cyclists, too, which makes it easier to interact with them.

Safety

• Three-star Euro NCAP safety rating
• No autonomous emergency braking
• But all feature seven standard airbags

When it was first crash tested in 2007, the Fiat 500 achieved a five-star safety rating. But Euro NCAP has tightened up its regulations since then and, when the car was re-tested in 2017, it was awarded a three-star safety rating.

This is primarily because the 500 does without a lot of the safety technology expected of modern city cars. For example, it doesn’t have autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assist or adaptive cruise control – all of which are fitted as standard to the Toyota Aygo X.

As a result, the 500 is a little more expensive to insure than it should be for a car of its size and power. It does feature seven airbags as standard, including curtain airbags and a knee airbag for the driver. However, Euro NCAP found that, in the 500’s frontal full-width crash test, the head of its driver dummy exceeded the critical limit for deceleration. That means, if the dummy was a human, the crash would have caused serious injury.

Watch: Fiat 500 Euro NCAP crash test