I agree Triedaq, and I sincerely hope the Fiat has those attributes. I believe there is a market for such a vehicle. It always dismayed me that the “new Beetle” was not one. It was just another FWD car with styling somewhat reminiscent of the old Beetles.
I remember very well the 1957-1960 years. I graduated from high school in that time period and began my college studies. General Motors, Chrysler and Ford lost sales. However, VW was selling every vehicle it could import, the American Motors Ramblers were way up in sales, and when Studebaker brought out its Lark in 1959, the company finally showed a profit. Many motorists wanted a practical car that didn’t have tail fins, but could transport 6 people. I remember that in 1959 my dad was looking for a new car. He hadn’t bought a brand new car since 1939. At the time, he had a 1954 Buick that he wanted to replace with another Buick. When we test drove a 1959 Buick, he didn’t like it as well as the one he was driving. After a test drive in a 1959 Buick, he told the salesman “I’m not paying $3300 for a 4 passenger car”. The seats in the new Buick were so hard in the middle because of the driveshaft hump that the car was essentially a 4 passenger car. He bought a Rambler–it could hold 6 people comfortably and had a good sized trunk.
By 1961, the cars lost their fins and most shrunk in size. Compact cars came on the market. Ford had introduced the Falcon, Chrysler brought out the Valiant and Chevrolet had its Corvair. In a couple of years, intermediate sized cars–the Ford Fairlane, the Chevrolet Chevelle, etc. – were put on the market and were about the same size as the full size Chevrolets and Fords had been in 1955. However, practicality didn’t last long and by the end of the 1960s, the cars all became larger. This sequence was repeated in the late 1970s when cars were again downsized. It seems to me that the manufacturers never learn from their mistakes. We go from practical cars to big bloated monsters. The U.S. manufacturers apparently never learned their lesson from the VW Beetle.
The Datsun dealer VDCdriver refers to sounds pretty much like the one that used to be here back in the 60s/70s. There was maybe 10 cars on the gravel lot, a rickety wooden building with 2 service stalls, and the owner along with 1 employee wearing 2 hats as a mechanic and washroom guy.
Eventually the Datsun franchise was sold and expanded and the ex-Datsun guy (who lived across the street from me) became a larger dealer on another car line along with running a small bank in a rural town.
One day the FDIC people swooped in en masse followed by a helicopter from one of the TV stations and that was the end of the his bank and banking career. The Feds don’t take kindly to ignoring warnings about doling out unsecured loans to relatives and shaky associates.
A dealer I worked for back in the 80s took on a Fiat franchise and it was a huge mistake. We became a franchised dealer and could not get so much as an air filter from the Fiat distributor. We finally had to resort to aftermarket parts and cannibalizing 2 brand new cars (an X-19 and a Spyder) to keep customer cars going. The distributor kept denying warranty claims time after time and finally the service manager got on the phone to find out what was going on. That’s when he found out that the telephone was disconnected and the distributor was history.
When the dealer closed a few years later those 2 gutted Fiats were still hanging on the racks in the back corner of the shop…
Just as bad, we became a dealer in the fall when the new year model cars were coming out and the first 2 truckloads of new Fiats that arrived were greeted with excitement; at least until it was discovered they were 2 model years old already. It gave a new meaning to the phrase “new old stock” and apparently they had been mothballed until the distributor found a sucke…uh, dealer to send them to. 
Wow, probably why the WSJ is losing ground. I had a 59 Beetle in the mid 60’s. I went from high school to college, to the Army, and to work with no time off. Always cut my hair and always worked. The car was cheap and I liked a car that was not the same as everything else. It replaced my Morris Minor. Can’t say it was real dependable.
I guess when I was about 12 a guy was at the gas station that had driven from New York to Minnesota on $7.50 worth of diesel in his Mercedes. I was amazed that you could go cross country that cheaply so it kind of became the standard. People were always concerned about the cost of gas, not just now.