Getting great fuel economy doesn't do you a lot of good when you're stuck in the snow. I'm assuming that because Fiat went through all of the trouble of setting up Fiat dealerships in the midwest, that they want to sell cars in the midwest. Guess what? It snows A LOT in the midwest and AWD / 4WD can be a deal breaker for a lot of the midwestern market. They certainly wouldn't sell fewer cars if they had an AWD model, and it's my understanding that Fiat already has a compatible AWD setup for the 500.