1.3 diesel SE

Enjoyable but also odd

My wife bought this because she is quite small at 5'1" - and most car seats are now too large for her to be comfortable. There is a very small number of cars with 'short' seats - she found the Chevvy Spark, Aygo, the A class and the Ypsilon - even Hyundai seats now seem to be oversized. (Her old Matrix was a wonderful car with great seats). It had to be less than 4050mm long to fit her garage.
The A class was classy - but gutless engines and expensive; the Spark and Aygo a bit small.
So - the Ypsilon 1.3 diesel goes well - plenty of poke and a bit too easy to find yourself over the speed limit , she is getting a genuine 60mpg on the first 2000 miles, the styling does take a little getting used to - bad points - front cupholders are very small (coke can size not thermal mug), very few cubbies for bags, deicer, odds and sods, rear vision is terrible due to thick pillars - you MUST get reversing sensors fitted. She did not get the Satnav - but it is too dear - I'm looking at an adaptor from rest of the Fiat range for her
Good bits - quite cute, nifty rear door handles, Bluetooth on the phone works very well, radio etc is good
She is still working out the display features gradually. The red is a proper Italian red - though described as clay red. Looks good with the grey alloys.
The salesman was like all of them - hung up on alloy wheels and gizmos in which she is just not interested - did not really bother to find out what was actually important to her. She bought the car; it was not 'sold'. Also usual unnecessary salesman patter - tried to sell every extra possible - finance, Supagard, gap insurance, fixed cost servicing etc. Wife was easily able to decline all of those - the gap insurance is a real con - you can get it for shed loads less with a wee bit of shopping around.
We have not seen another on the road so suspect that prices will drop soon. I like driving it too. She does about 12000 pr annum, mostly for work, mostly country roads and motorways - I would certainly look at it if I was driving into Congestion charge zone regularly too.
Jan 2012 update - there was a Chrysler leaflet advertising 2 free services at the dealers for Ypsilons registered before 31.12.11. Chrysler and the dealers now seem to be trying to weasel out of this - saying that she got 'such a good deal', there were 'free extras' and that offer was 'not available at the time of purchase'. The leaflet does not state this - so be warned - this is not a way to get a good reputation for square dealing Chrysler. Will update you all.
Thinking about it - it is possible that salesman had not dealt with someone like my wife - who knew what she did (and did not want) and just kept pushing on price. She can be very direct and may have unbalanced him by asking 'odd' questions.

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