Shawny69 - its good to hear from someone with very comparable cars, my weekender is a 987 Boxster S.
Well stood like a prune in the middle of an empty Fiat dealership this morning waiting to be noticed (only one there). Eventually i spotted someone who turned out to be my contact, he'd ignored me twice desipte knowing he had an appointment at 9am
So off for test drive in 1.2 Sport - after 500 yards on the road, i notice it has a 6 speed gearbox

. Oh well !!.
So my impressions..
..sports seats are really nice, plenty of side support and under thigh padding. Just enough headroom without the glass roof (i'd tried the ByDiesel in the showroom whilst waiting and my head rubs on the blind (with seat on lowest setting).
Leather/fabric looks more robust than the lounge checkered trim which i'm sure would be filfthy after 6 months in my hands

.
Ride quality OK on 15s and road noise OK too although it was running on Dunlop Sport 01s which are known to be quiet tyres.
Performance was OK, nothing really spectacular (i forgot about the sport button :bang: ). Was pretty slow pulling away from junctions, maybe i just needed a few more revs rather than being gentle with it. The engine didn't seem that willing to rev at any point in the rev range, not too bad from 4k-6k but still the rev counter was a bit slow. Car only had 1800 miles on the clock so obviously still tight. Tried to measure some in gear acceleration as a comparison to my old Golf TDi. From 30 to 60 in 3rd gear seemed to be around 9seconds - the Golf can do it in 8. The 500 is a little slow to get going at 30 but after about 45mph it was on par - figures entirely in line with the differences in power plants, and had i started in 2nd and changed to third i'm sure it would have been like for like.
Brakes - hell they were sharp, and people say VW brakes are sharp ! Didn't notice this on the 1.2 Pop is drove so maybe the bigger brakes ?
Annoyances - a metallic tingle/rasp at times - maybe an italian exhaust system, but more likely something metallic resonating under the rear end somewhere.
Overall - Great little car, nice to drive , ride and noise was fine for me. Bit disappointed it wasn't quicker though, certainly didnt feel much quicker than the 1.2 Pop and not what i thought 100bhp in 900Kg would feel like.
So conclusion is if i'm going for a 500 then i need the 1.4 engine, i really couldn't put up with a 1.2 in A/B road driving. Funny thing is i ran a 1.3Ka for 10 weeks once and my recollection of that was it was pretty punchy, although overtaking was often a challenge !
So need to find a dealer to discount so i can get a 1.4