For the past 60 years or so, Fiat has had what amounted to a compulsive gambler’s business model: invest tons in one single car, cross fingers that it sells like hotcakes, and run the rest of the company with disinterest. This one-pony strategy has often delivered what, in the end, were the most desirable small cars of each decade. How else to describe the 1950’s 1100, the 1960’s 124, the 128 from the 70s or the Uno from the 80s? All, as well as the Punto from the 1990s and the Panda from the present decade, adhered to a simple but elusive formula: cheap to buy, brilliantly packaged, surprisingly robust, and a hoot to drive. (Most other Fiats, let’s not fail to mention, have been crap).
Around two million Pandas have been built since 2003. But it is still the minicar I most like to drive. You can get one for eight thousand Euros, which is around one third of the average price of a new car, yet it will seat four in acceptable comfort. The other day I spent a few hours driving a 1.2L model with just 60 horses. The engine is a gem: quiet at any speed, gutsy from 1200 RPM onwards, free-spinning to 6,000 RPM. The way it responds to gas-pedal pokes is faintly reminiscent of a carbureted engine.
Sure, it’s no sports car, but it felt lively and capable in any situation, and anybody who would claim it’s too slow for safety just doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift properly.
The standard, fun on-board computer seldom registered less than 39 MPG. The dashboard, as I observed in my 4X4 review, is an exemplary contemporary industrial design, meaning it does what it should do better than most, and still looks pretty. Also standard: a superassist button to make urban steering extra light. It may sound like a silly thing to have, but let me ask you this: with what other car, except for a Lancer Evo, can you induce and hold a four-wheel drift with your index finger?
From the Panda came two cubs: the Fiat 500 and the Ford Ka. Both are cuter, both are pricier, and neither are better. Due to nonsensical safety standards, I fear that America will never get the Panda, Chrysler hookup notwithstanding. That’s a pity.
I love this car. To me, it and the Renault Clio are the ideal econoboxes. Inexpensive transportation for four people or a bunch of gear.
Sir, I couldn’t agree more. Fiat has always made some exceptional small cars, and yes, terrible mid-size cars. Even the Alfa Romeo 147 was far superior to larger models.
Panda is among the very few cars Fiat got right. Trully a gem among a vast sea of scap.
The 100hp (1.4litre) model is even more fun but I agree – small Fiats generally tend to be a hoot – you rev them to the heavens, then rev them some more before shifting gear and doing it again.
I’ve had more fun in small cheap, not even completely functioning Fiats thain anything someone like the VW group (VW, Audi, etc.) managed to put together. It’s at low speed too, so relatively sane, safe and not antisocial in terms of endangering others on the road as a result :)
I love this car too. although FIAT stands for many things in many languages, most of them negative, some derogatory. they still SOMETIMES can make a nice car or two or perhaps more if you squint…
although the Panda is great fun and utility especially with 100hp and 4×4, the 500 is also great to drive. but nowadays, FIAT has been outdoing itself, they have a few nice looking cars, Bravo, Punto Grande, 500, Panda, and Linea to name the best ones. they are all roughly underpinned by the same chassis and share the same engines. maybe not the bravo though… in any case,they all drive nicely, are quite refined considering older FIAT’s and other competitors and their interiors are light years ahead in quality and design then what they used to be…
granted they still have issues, but with Chrysler they would probably sort them out before they ship them to the US, if ever. but believe me the US auto scene is missing a lot with the lack cars with the Abarth Logo in essesse kits.
oh yeah but dotn buy the automatic or sequential gearbox option, you will hate the brand for it…
“Sure, it’s no sports car, but it felt lively and capable in any situation, and anybody who would claim it’s too slow for safety just doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift properly.”
And when driven in their native habitat, by natives, you really learn to appreciate how much fun a low-powered, light little car can be if it’s well designed. I’m thinking especially of old friends who live 10k outside of Lucca off very narrow, very twisty single lane roads, that have maybe a foot of clearance on either side of the car, with berms and crops right up to the edge of the pavement. It’s driving like that that sold me on the Unos and Pandas et al years ago. Fun stuff!
P.S.: I just went back and read the 4×4 review. I find myself occasionally daydreaming about that car. If it were available stateside, I’d buy it immediately, depreciation be damned.
Now just imagine this car re-badged as the Dodge Lamb, with a trunk grafted on the back, a V6 under the hood and a lard-assed American at the wheel.
Sorta’ loses something in translation, doesn’t it?
My brother bought a dark blue 128 in 1970 predating the VW Rabbit by four years. Transverse engine, fwd, comfortable seating for 4 and really fun to drive. The Panda is so smart; if they could get the Panda 100hp to the states for a reasonable price, I’d be first in line…….
“Due to nonsensical safety standards…”
Driving this vehicle on the Indiana Turnpike during peak hours, @ 75mph, surrounded by double and triple-trailered semi-trucks with a strong crosswind would make one think a lot about things such as rapid acceleration, structural integrity and airbags.
This is America, where what used to be moved by rails is moved by Interstate; though the recent spike in fuel prices and the down economy have reduced that somewhat, there are times when being caught in the ‘freight lane’ in a tiny car will aggravate your acid reflux.
@nudave: how about the Panda 4×4 with a 7-bar Jeep grille on the front?
how about the Panda 4×4 with a 7-bar Jeep grille on the front?
It would have been a much better idea than the Compass.
The Italians are the only nationality that seem to believe that driving should always be fun, whether in a megabuck Ferrari or a budget Fiat. Unfortunately we only get the megabuck Italian cars in the USA so most of us cannot share this joy.
Plus you can say that you own the same car as one of the Top Gear guys (perhaps declining to add that it’s James May’s).
Driving this vehicle on the Indiana Turnpike during peak hours, @ 75mph, surrounded by double and triple-trailered semi-trucks with a strong crosswind would make one think a lot about things such as rapid acceleration, structural integrity and airbags.
This is a stronger car than just about anything made during the 1990s. It’s a contemporary, in both size and shape, of the Toyota Yaris hatchback. It’s safe enough.
I drove a late-eighties Toyota Van for years, back and forth from St. Catharines to Kingston (if you know the route, this means “over the Burlington skyway). More than six feet tall, not very wide, mid-engined and riding on a wheelbase a little smaller than Tercel of the same era. The skyway winds were enough to lift unloaded tractor-trailers and could blow that little bastard Toyota into the next lane if the driver (me) wasn’t attentive.
This Fiat is a Ferrari by comparison, and concerns about safety really aren’t founded because you’re no more safe in a Camry. Or a Suburban, if your concern is what a tractor-trailer will do to you.
The Bravo is the Fiat I would be interested in, the Linea as well. The 500 and Panda are gimmick cars that people on blog sites like talking about but will never sell to Americans.
Alfa 159 would be my ideal Fiat Group car sold in the US
@shaker: You misunderstand. It’s not that the Panda don’t conform to any safety standards or are unsafe 3rd-world crackerbox deathmobiles. It’s that they conform to the international ECE standards (used throughout the industrialized world) rather than the U.S. standards. The U.S. standards are not better, they’re just different. See this editorial. Motorways in continental Europe, Australia, the U.K. and many other places carry a vehicle mix including big trucks — some bigger than those you find on U.S. interstates — and cars like the Panda, often at higher speeds and with better safety than we have in the U.S.