Hi all

I've had my 500 since April 2008 (1.3 multijet lounge) and love him to bits but it all went pear shaped 3 weeks ago.  My husband was driving the car home when it started accelerating and masses of smoke began pouring out of it (filling the cabin too).  He pulled into a layby and the engine was over-revving madly - didn't stop even when he pulled the key out of the ignition.  It was a very scary experience.  The AA man thought it might be a fault with one of the injectors and when it went back to the dealer they didn't have any idea as to what the problem might be and said they'd never experienced this with a 500 before.  My husband reported the incident to Fiat Customer Care who, to be honest, weren't that helpful.  On reading through this forum it seems like this isn't the first time this type of problem has occurred so I'm surprised by Customer Care's lack of concern and the dealer's lack of knowledge.

I wrote to Honest John (Daily Telegraph letters' page) describing the incident and in his reply he said that it's quite a widespread problem with the DPF which when it's clogged  contaminates the sump oil etc, etc.  There was a letter in the Telegraph just yesterday from another 500 owner who had exactly the same problem.

I now have my car back after 3 weeks off the road - during this time we were kept pretty much in the dark by the dealership - they never returned phone calls and never indicated what the problem was.  They say they have fitted a new engine and that if the DPF light comes on again I need to drive the car hard until the light goes off or, if I'm concerned to bring it back to them for it to be checked out.  As this light has tended to come on intermittently every couple of months this could be a pain.

This seems like a worrying design/technical failure on such a new car and I'm dreading that little orange light coming on again.  I'm really thinking that I should have gone for the petrol engine and avoided the diesel at all costs.

Has anyone else experienced this?