For fans of Italian cars — those with positive recollections, anyway — the high-profile introduction of the Fiat 500 to the United States this year holds the promise of a long-awaited brand revival.

But for the 500 to be a genuine success, paving the way for a full line of European driver’s cars to follow, its appeal would have to be more durable than a pretty face and an attractive body. My quest to plumb the 500’s inner beauty recently took me on a long drive that included stops in Naples, Verona, Florence, Rome and Venice.

Like the 500, these cities have Italian antecedents with American appeal. The route from Naples, Maine, to Verona, N.J., to Florence, S.C., to Rome, Ga., to Venice, Fla., also included a stop in Alexandria — Virginia, that is — to sample Fiat 500s from the postwar generation.

On overseas business trips I have admired the 21st-century 500 — a reincarnation of the diminutive 1957-75 Cinquecento — squirting around cities like Berlin and Stockholm. So when Fiat offered an initial allocation of American 500s on its U.S. website last year, I put a $500 deposit on a Prima Edizione model and snagged No. 172 before the run of 500 cars sold out in 100 minutes.

The Prima Edizione is an offshoot of the $17,500 Sport model, dressed up with a black-painted roof and beltline, special badges and seat trim, a numbered dashboard plaque and a power sunroof. Including a $500 destination charge, my car, in a rich shade of red, cost $20,350.

Days after it arrived in March, with my GPS unit, E-ZPass, hotel reservations and printout from bedbugregistry.com in hand, I took off from Naples, Maine, a charming lakeside town of 4,000.

Portions of the U.S. highway from Naples to Portland, Maine, are hilly; to keep the 101-horsepower engine charging along, I had to shift the 5-speed often, but the car proved as poised as George Clooney sailing Lake Como.

I arrived in Verona, a township of about 13,000 some 20 miles west of Manhattan. Filling the tank with 9.5 gallons of premium and doing some long division, I found that the 364-mile first leg of the trip yielded 38.3 mpg, right on the EPA highway estimate of 38.

Next up, Dante’s autobahn — the New Jersey Turnpike, where treacherous merges and construction projects large enough to be seen from outer space were made all the more entertaining by an afternoon of ark-building rain. But the Fiat was absolutely composed: precise steering, no hydroplaning and brakes that grabbed more aggressively than Tony Soprano at the Bada Bing.

My arrival in the Washington area coincided with the evening rush hour, where a cascading rain added to the usual chaos. Fortunately, the GPS unit’s Catherine Zeta-Jones (so I imagined) routed me through suburban neighborhoods to my Virginia hotel.

This 221-mile segment returned 32.5 mpg. The day’s tally: 585 miles, nine states and the disintegration of my temporary cardboard license plate.

The 1.4-liter Fiat 500 has a charmingly optimistic 140-mph speedometer. The back seat can accept passengers ranging in size from infants to Tom Cruise, but average adults will find it sausage-casing tight. The rest of the trip took me through four more states; one day was mostly the interstate between Florence and Atlanta, a refinedfreeway whose only drawback was the grooved pavement — the tires dug into the rain grooves and tossed the car back and forth.

Driving 2,123 miles through 13 states showcased the Fiat 500’s character and solidity. I love the thick leather-with-red-stitching steering wheel. The driver-side mirror has a useful blind-spot reflector. The sliding shade for the sunroof is welcome. And the golf-ball-size chrome gearshift knob is quite slick even if it doesn’t rival the snick-snick precision of a Mazda Miata.

So does the 2012 Fiat 500 possess the character of the original or exude any special Italianness? Well, no and no. It’s definitely not an idiosyncratic Italian car from the 1960s. But it proudly wears its reliability and craftsmanship like an Armani suit. The public admires it, and the fun-to-drive meter reads 11.

2012 Fiat 500

Price: Starting at $15,500

As tested: $20,350

Type: Front-engine, front-wheel-drive subcompact hatchback in various models

Engine: 1.4-liter DOHC 16-valve MultiAir inline four-cylinder

Mileage: To be determined; estimated 38 mpg highway

Source: Fiat 500 USA