Fiat Panda Selecta

The Panda's not really putting a mechanical foot wrong at the moment, so Richard tackles some minor jobs

A while back in Our Classics, Charlie detailed how he’d improved his Peugeot 205 by reapplying its missing decals and pinstripes. That got me thinking – back in its past, my Fiat Panda was involved in a crash. Quite what happened isn’t known, but I suspect one legacy of that incident is that its hatchback has pinstriping – two parallel 2mm silver lines – while the rest of the car doesn’t. Presumably, a secondhand rear door was just swapped over. Just having lines on one panel of the car has always rather bugged me and, inspired by seeing another green machine like mine on the Fiat Panda Classic Owners’ Group UK Facebook page that was fully striped out, I decided to complete the job on mine.

A search online soon found a 10m roll of silver double pintripes that would do the job nicely – for just £3.95 including postage from ASW Motor Factors. To prepare, I rubbed down the side of the car where the striping was to go using cleaning alcohol. Application was easy enough, doing a bit at a time, aided by the natural panel and Giorgetto Giugiaro having basically designed the boxy Panda as a series of straight lines – no awkward curving waistlines to cope with here. I like the result – I think the pinstriping breaks up the slab sides a little. But how long will it last without peeling, I wonder?

My other cheap ‘n’ cheerful job was in the engine bay. I’d noticed that the hot air ducting from the engine manifold to the air cleaner had pretty much disintegrated and looked like something you’d uncover at a Roman archaeology dig. With colder weather now, sadly, approaching (but what a summer it was, eh, folks?), I felt that anything that would help the engine to warm up as soon as possible was worthwhile. Online again, and after a £7.99 payment to Dorset Autospares, I had a length of 38mm-wide high temperature-resistant aluminium tubing that, when compressed, proved a very snug, air-tight fit. Bring it on,

winter.

Double pinstripe enhances the waistline, but is still quite subtle. Flames next?

Patience and a steady hand needed to apply pinstripes.

New ducting should make winter bearable.

New ducting tightly in place. Heat efficiency!

removing the air filter revealed how much the ducting had deteriorated.

Tailgate-only stripes offended richard’s OcD.