Bicentennial Man, er Fiat

I pulled the facia on the 500 and just had to take a picture.

In this shot, Guido reminds me of the movie "Bicentennial Man". In the movie, the Robin Williams character is a robot who, when they remove his plastic face (facia) and he looks in the mirror, screams at the site of the mechanical components underneath the face. "What's wrong?," says his colleague. "I saw the inner me.", says Robin.


I pulled the facia to try to find a place for louder horns. There they are, the red discs under the bumper.

This little car is amazingly tightly packaged. Hardly any wasted space at all. The new horns just barely squeeze in between the AC condenser and the fog lights in the facia. It reminds me of a line I will paraphrase from Monte Python. Petting a rabbit, "So small, so firm, so fully packed."


The other thing I often do with a new car this time of year is to install a stronger headlight bulb. Guido's lights are OK, but I always want more. At least until I'm melting the snow off the road in front of me.

So I pulled one of the headlight bulbs to figure out what to buy. To my surprise, Fiat had already put the best available bulb in the car, one that put out more than twice the lumens of any other available bulb. These little touches always surprise me.

Naturally, I broke the bulb by dropping when trying to remove it. That way I learned that it is not only the brightest, but also rather expensive at nearly $50 per bulb.

My bad.