Fiat and J-LO SUCK!

NOVEMBER 22--As part of a new multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with Fiat, Jennifer Lopez has shot several TV commercials for the Italian automaker, placed the Fiat 500 in her latest music video, and even put the vehicle center stage during her performance Sunday night at the American Music Awards.

But while the brand building and cross-promotion campaign is both lucrative and far-reaching, the star does have her collaborative limits. Specifically, the 42-year-old actress will not visit the Bronx in service of shilling the subcompact car.

While Lopez, Fiat, the automotive firm’s PR people, and its Detroit ad agency would have consumers believe that the star deigned to return home to film a low-speed pilgrimage through the gritty streets of her hometown, she actually never set foot in the Bronx during the filming of the Fiat spots.

Instead, the role of “Jenny from the Block” was played by a body double, according to two sources familiar with the commercial production. While the Lopez lookalike was actually behind the wheel in the Bronx, Lopez herself was in Los Angeles, where she was filmed inside a Fiat 500
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To help perpetuate this fakery and fiction, the commercial is crammed with every stereotypical New York street scene that director Max Malkin could stage. Along with cutaways of Lopez looking glamorous at the wheel, the actress purportedly drives past a teen boy drumming on overturned plastic pails; a guy break dancing on a sidewalk; a black NYPD officer walking the beat; kids cavorting under an open fire hydrant; girls in Catholic school uniforms double-dutching; graffiti artists spray painting the metal gate of a hardware store; black guys shooting hoops in the park; and teenage girls trying out their best curbside hip-hop dance moves.

It is such a breathtaking assemblage of hoary urban clichés, it’s a wonder that Lopez & Co. forgot to include a shot of some grizzled pensioners playing dominoes or a Puerto Rican enjoying some shaved ice