A little while back I tested a bog-standard Fiat Panda and while it was slower
than a real panda, it was also a damn sight cheaper to buy or run. So on
balance, I liked it very much.
Since then, though, a couple of things have caused me to look once again at
those initial findings. First of all James May, my colleague from Top Gear,
has bought one, which means there must be something wrong with it, and
second, I know what that something is.
Yes, the Panda is very good in town and very good, too, in snow and ice. It is
also a great deal of fun on small rural back roads, because even if
something does turn out to be coming the other way, there is always room to
squeeze between it and the hedgerow.
But the Panda is a very small car, which means it has a very small engine,
which means it is absolutely hopeless on the motorway. As hopeless as I
would be on the men’s downhill course at Klosters.
Driving an underpowered car on the motorway is one of the most dangerous
things a man can do. It’s up there with sticking your middle finger in the
bottom of a sleeping tiger. It’s very nearly as dangerous as driving through
Alabama with “Hillary for President” written on the side of your car.
The problem is simple. You come up behind a truck that is doing 50mph in the
middle lane. So you think you will simply pull out and overtake. You
therefore indicate, wait for a gap in the stream of traffic to your right
and ease out.
Textbook stuff. Worthy of a Mr Tufty safe driving award from PC McGarret No
452.
Except you’re in for a shock because although you have your foot welded to the
floor and you’re in third gear and the little engine is screaming itself to
death, you are not doing what a scientist would call “accelerating”.
And now the car in the outside lane that was a speck in your rear-view mirror
is leaving thick black lines all over the road as the driver desperately
tries to avoid slamming into the back of the “effing a***hole” that pulled
into his lane at 50mph . . . and then failed to go any faster.
You’re terrified that at any second it will slam into your tailgate, and this
is doubly worrying when you’re in a Fiat Panda because the tailgate in
question is only 4in abaft of your most precious and vital organs.
I use this as a general rule of thumb. If a car has less than 100 horsepower,
it is never safe to pull into the outside lane if there is a car in sight .
. . even if it’s three miles away. If a car has less than 60 horsepower, it
is never safe to pull into the outside lane at all.
Sixty horsepower was fine in the days when cars had four wheels and a seat but
now the average small car has so much safety equipment and so many luxury
goods nailed to its dashboard that it weighs more than Bolivia. And to move
a country, you need more than 60 horses. A lot more.
As you may know, I’m not well disposed to the idea of governments banning
things, except for beards and ginger hair and butter beans and Scotsmen
sitting in Westminster and caravans and any talk of global warming by people
who don’t know what they’re on about and the Toyota Prius and books with no
plot and costume dramas on ITV and anything with Jade Goody in it and Ken
bloody Livingstone, but the only thing that stops me from banning the Fiat
Panda from the outside lane of a motorway is that May would become even
later for his call times on Top Gear.
Actually, there’s another reason. Fiat has just brought out a more peppy
version of its lovable little car that has — wait for it — a dizzying 100
horsepower. That’s about a fifth of what I reckon is necessary to make
progress these days, but hey, it’s a step in the right direction.
A 100 horsepower Panda should, in theory, be the perfect car. As cheeky and as
much fun as its less powerful brothers. But useable on the motorway and not
burdened with the ponderous May association.
It looks fab, too, with all sorts of sporty chicken wire grilles and zoomy
lights. If it were a dog, it would have patches and cockeyed ears and it
would whiz round your mother’s ankles whenever she came to stay and make a
point of sticking its nose in the vicar’s crotch. But nobody else’s. If it
were a dog, you’d like it a lot.
But it isn’t a dog. It’s a car and it’s good at that, too, easily swallowing
two children into the back and, thanks to its boxy body, still having a
decent-sized boot. I bet you could get an ironing board in there if you were
determined enough.
So snow, ice, the school run, the motorway, town centres, parking, flash
dinner parties, the station run in a morning. The little Fiat can take all
these things in its stride and still be suitable for the family man who
likes to spend his weekends doing extreme ironing. So, as a result, the
specialist motoring press has been raving about this car.
Thinking that it might actually be Jesus with alloy wheels, I borrowed one.
And I’m sorry but I pretty much hated it.
The problem is that the original, proper, normal Fiat Panda was conceived as a
local car for local people. It was designed to be as cheap as possible and
it is: £7,000 for a car that has, give or take, just as many parts as a
£21,000 VW Golf is little short of remarkable. And it’s not like it was made
by jungle people who were brought up on What Ox magazine either.
The trouble is that by sticking a 1.4 litre engine under the bonnet, you are
now paying £10,000 for a £7,000 car. And it shows.
Yes, it’s faster. Yes, it corners well. And yes, it rides more smoothly than
you might imagine, too, but there is almost no refinement at all. It’s like
putting a Saturn V rocket in your vacuum cleaner. Sure, you will get the
housework done more quickly but there will be some issues with noise,
vibration and harshness.
And so it goes in the hot Panda. The engine gave me a headache, and because
it’s pretty loud I had to turn the stereo up, and that made my headache
worse. So then I had to slow down, and then what’s the point of all that
extra power?
They say it will do 115mph, and I dare say that’s right, but achieving this
speed is hard — there aren’t enough Nurofen in the world and it’s not
desirable anyway because the Panda is so small it feels like you’re the food
and it’s the hermetically sealed bag.
The windscreen is right there, in front of your nose. The back window is right
there, touching the back of your head, and the deep side windows complete
the picture with your peripheral vision. So when you’re doing 90mph it feels
like you’re doing 90mph . . . without the benefit of a car around you.
That’s quite disturbing, especially when you have the headache from hell.
I suppose if I were a well-off youth after a stylish urban runaround, and I
never needed to make a long journey, the 100 horsepower Panda might make
some kind of sense. But for anyone else, I’m afraid it’s time to draw pretty
much the same wearisome conclusion that I seem to draw with all small car
tests these days. You’re better off with the Suzuki Swift Sport.
Vital statistics
Model Fiat Panda 1.4 16v five-door
Engine 1368cc, four cylinders
Power 100bhp @ 5800rpm
Torque 94 lb ft @ 4500rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 43.5mpg
CO2 154g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 9.5sec
Top speed 115mph
Price £9,995
Rating 2/5
Verdict Like a rocket in a vacuum cleaner
