This is a Fiat Viaggio, as seen on a rainy morning in the Chinese capital Beijing. The Viaggio was in perfect shape, painted in a classy color called Coral Red, and fitted with the original multispoke wheels.
The Fiat Viaggio is a compact fastback sedan developed for the Chinese car market by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). The Viaggio was based on the Fiat Compact Wide platform. It shared much of its underpinnings with the Dodge Dart. The Fiat Viaggio was made in China by the GAC-FCA joint venture from 2012 until 2017, with a small facelift in 2015. The car that I saw is a pre-facelift car. In 2013, Fiat launched a hatchback variant called the Fiat Ottimo.
The Fiat Viaggio is a good-looking car. The design looks properly Italian. It has some sporty elements too, like the integrated spoiler in the boot lid and the black window frames.
The design of the interior is not as exciting as the exterior, but the lower part of the center stack looks kind of cool. The owner of this particular car added a set of seat covers to protect the original seats.
Characters: 广汽菲亚特, Guǎngqì Fēiyàtè, GAC Fiat. The Chinese name of the Viaggio is 菲翔, Fēixiáng. The Viaggio was a compact 5-seat sedan, size: 4679/1850/1471, with a 2708 millimeter wheelbase.
Fiat offered only one engine: a 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder ‘T-Jet’ with an output of 120 hp and 206 Nm. The engine was mated to a 5-speed manual or a 6-speed DCT, like in this car. With the DCT, the top speed was 194 km/h and 0-100 took an easy 10.9 seconds. The base price of the DCT model was 122.800 yuan, in line with the competition.
Sadly for GAC-Fiat, the Viaggio and the Ottimo didn’t sell very well. This was mainly caused by a lack of dealers. In many cities, you simply couldn’t buy one, even if you wanted to. Another problem was a lack of other engine options. At that time, most competitors offered at least 3 different engines per car model, sometimes even more.
And finally, the Fiat brand wasn’t very well known in China. After production ended in 2017, the joint venture stopped making Fiat-branded cars and focused on making Jeep-branded SUVs. That wasn’t a big success either and the joint venture went bankrupt in 2022.
A sad end for Fiat in the largest car market in the world. And it wasn’t the first time. Back in 2007, Fiat discontinued an earlier joint venture with Nanjing Auto, which made the Siena sedan and Palio hatchback. There are currently no plans to bring the Fiat brand back to China for a third time.