I had the loan of a fat 500 (500L) which had the new uConnect system which is gradually appearing in most FGA cars.

Whilst it sounds good and looks quite good with its touchscreen interface (hard to see in some lights but good in others) it's functionality was behind that of B&M - certainly with an iPhone 5 running Music Player for tunes and Tomtom app for navigation.

Playlists are out the window unless you control them directly on the iPhone - unlike uConnect, Blue&Me can control them perfectly. uConnect claims to be able to recognise two types of playlists but the formats meant nothing to me and are certainly not iPhone compatible.

Getting the Tomtom instructions to play properly was troublesome too - very convoluted and fiddly. Most of the problems seemed to revolve around automatically playing the audio over Bluetooth on A2DP. Although it is possible to connect the iPhone to the car using the USB socket it seemingly wouldn't play music or Tomtom instructions that way.

The reason I tell you all about this is that there are French reports of a Fiat 500 facelift/minor revamp this autumn (to be revealed at Frankfurt show 10th Sept?) and I would be very surprised if the uConnect system isn't a part of it - as it is in the 2014 Mito.

I never thought I would be sticking up for Blue&Me but there you go.