In New Spot for Fiat 500, Parsing Notions of Nationhood As Stuart Elliott wrote in a column that appeared Sunday in The Times, a new commercial for the Fiat 500 highlights the Italian pedigree of the car. The spot might be construed as a clock-resetting moment for a brand that, by many accounts, fumbled its reintroduction to the American market last year after an absence of nearly three decades. But even by proclaiming the car's Italian roots, Fiat may expose itself to further lashings by literal-minded critics who contend that the 500 sold in the United States traverses not the azure Atlantic but the arid, craggy Sierra Madre. The 500, 500C and 500 Abarth are produced at a plant operated by Chrysler, Fiat's corporate sibling, in Toluca, Mexico. Fiat might be fairly accused of a bait and switch in the case of Jennifer Lopez, who was not on set in an advertisement in which she was depicted driving through her native Bronx, but the charge of falsifying nationhood is considerably trickier to pin on the 500. As Ezra Dyer wrote in The Times, national identity is a slippery commodity in the automotive industry, with entire brands held outside the countries in which they were born. To Fiat's credit, the new commercial ends with a pitchman describing the car as the "Italian-designed Fiat 500," not the Italian-built 500. The 500 is produced for the European market in Poland. On that score, Fiat cannot be challenged; it was designed at its Centro Stile in Turin - albeit in large part by Frank Stephenson, who currently serves as the design director for McLaren Automotive.