According to Fiat, suburban sweet life is slowly cruising around small quiet streets, preferably near the ocean, in your adorable Topolino, while silently judging your neighbors trying to look as cool in their golf carts. OK, so maybe I added the last part, but relaxed driving in a small coastal town is the dream that the Fiat Topolino is selling, and I'm having a hard time not falling in love with it.
After much teasing from the brand, Fiat's little mouse is finally coming to the United States and will eventually be sold as a street-legal Low Speed Vehicle (LSV), but initially the Topolinos will only have a top speed of 19 mph. That makes it a glorified golf cart, but that's OK because low-speed golf cart cruising is already popular in many American neighborhoods. So it likely won't be too hard for Fiat to sell Americans on its little taste of the sweet life, even at its $14,985 price tag.
Far more stylish than any golf cart
I live near a lot of small, wealthy coastal towns, and my wife works in one of the wealthiest in New Jersey, so I'm very familiar with the idea of crawling around narrow coastal streets in golf carts. And rich people being rich people, they all love to compete over who has the coolest one. If anyone rolls up to a local lunch spot near the water in a Fiat Topolino, they'd instantly win that competition, because it's infinitely more stylish and interesting than any golf cart.
Not only will it be the most stylish, but it'll probably be the most expensive. Fiat offers two flavors of Topolino: regular and the Dolce Vita. Both cost $14,985 and are basically the same, but the Dolce Vita version has cute little ropes instead of doors, kind of like the old Fiat Jolly.
That's about the extent of the options list, though. At the moment, the only color choice is Verde Vita green, and they all come with 14-inch wheels, LED lights, and hinged windows instead of roll down ones. If you buy the standard Topolino you get a panoramic sunroof, but the Dolce Vita version has a roll-back soft-top. Inside, they all get digital gauges, a phone holder and a bag hook, and the regular Topolino even gets a windshield defroster. If you do want to add some flair to your Topolino, Fiat partnered with Motori & Customs, which will offer further customization, special editions, and one-of-one customer commissions.
Yes, it's slow, but that's kind of the point
There's only one powertrain available in either version of the Topolino, a single front-mounted electric motor with 8 horsepower. That gives it a 19-mph top speed right out of the box. To be classified as an LSV, it needs to have a top speed between 20-25 mph, so the Topolino can't drive on public roads in most states right away. However, there is a Low Speed Vehicle conversion kit coming by the end of summer that can bump the top speed to 25 mph, matching what the Topolinos can do in Europe.
Since it has a small motor and only weighs 1,073 pounds, the Topolino has a small 5.3-kWh battery and a total range of 46 miles. What's nice about that small battery is that it charges quickly. With just a 2.3-kW AC charger, it only takes five hours. So you don't need a special wall box to charge it up overnight, just a standard outlet will do.
If you want to cruise around your beachy town, stunting on everyone else in a boring golf cart, the Fiat Topolino is the most charming way to do so, even if it's one of the most expensive. Hopefully, enough Americans buy into this idea that Fiat decides to sell the larger Multiplina here, too.