Fiat Panda
It’s MoT time for the little Fiat. Will it repeat its Volvo 940 stablemate’s epic fail? Richard’s got everything crossed…
1993 FIAT PANDA 1.1 SELECTA
The MoT is always a testing time… for owners as well as cars. After having had to shell out quite a bit to get my Volvo 940 through its annual check-up towards the end of last year, I wasn’t relishing the end of the Panda’s ticket. Granted, there’s a lot less to go wrong on something as tiny as one of these Fiat city cars, but it’s also old and Italian – a combination that doesn’t always wear quite as well as something old and Swedish.
Eventually though, the time had come, so I took the Panda to West Street Garage in Stamford. They always seemed pleased to see it there – there’s invariably much laughter when it rocks up; I like to think it makes their morning far more entertaining than something modern and serious would. The Fiat certainly did its best to inject some comedy into proceedings, chucking an impressive amount of screenwash fluid at passing mechanics while its washer jets were being fine-tuned and bopping MoT tester Ryan on the head with its hatchback. That earned it its first advisory – ‘tailgate damper weak’.
But, despite my fears, it only earned two further advisories – a slightly worn rear track control arm bush and a nearside front tyre that was past its best (but before any readers write in, I was aware of it, it had been checked for legality, and it will be changed very soon). The underneath – always a worry on old Fiats – was solid and it also passed its emissions tests once it was properly warm, quite comfortably in the case of the fast idle CO and HC levels, less so with the lambda reading. But it was enough – the Panda had passed!
That’s just as well, because I will be needing its urban and commuter economy, now that something new has joined the Gunn fleet, with an engine almost three times the size of the Fiat’s and packing over four times the power. But that’s another story for another Our Classics. Stay tuned…