Fiat takes on 'Fix It Again, Tony' in spot for the 500X

DETROIT -- Fiat global brand head Olivier Francois calls Tony “the elephant in the room.”

And for more than five years, Fiat has tried to run away from him, even though Tony does not exist.

But no more.

A new video spot for the Fiat 500X finally takes on Tony -- the nom de guerre for the brand’s decades-old quality woes in its “Fix It Again, Tony” English-language acronym.

But it does so in a way without ever addressing the arguably more important word in the derisive phrase: again.

In the 90-second video, a man is standing outside Tony’s repair shop speaking to the Italian owner and trying to get a broken mirror on his Honda Civic fixed. Tony asks his two Italian mechanics to “Fix It,” pointing to the Civic’s busted mirror. But instead, they begin a rant about the Civic’s lack of style, leather seats and other supposed deficiencies, calling it “a caveman in a cavecar,” among other insults.

“We fix,” they say in broken English, sending the bewildered owner into the waiting room for an espresso. When he emerges, his blue Civic has been replaced with a new Fiat 500X subcompact crossover.

“We fixed it,” the mechanics say proudly.

The automaker has not yet announced when it will air the spot, a spokeswoman said. The automaker said later today, after the spot was first reported, that it didn't want to characterize the spot as a "commercial."

Fiat repeatedly has been the lowest ranking mass-market brand on quality surveys by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power and Associates.

But in his presentation introducing the 500X to North America at the Los Angeles Auto Show last week, Francois said it was time to retire the perception that Fiat has poor quality.