Category: Small Family 
Price Range: £13,255 to £17,650
Handsome-looking hatch; nicely finished interior and efficient new 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engines; good new 1.6 diesel.
Lumpy ride on the biggest wheels, engines could be quieter at speed, no external boot release, optional sat nav has ultra-vague instructions.
A vast improvement over the unloved Stilo but no more than an average car in its class.
Fiat has revived the 'Bravo' name for its new five-door replacement for the Stilo - the firm's ill-fated attempt to make an Italian Golf.
The Bravo looks more elegant than the lumpy Stilo, with its front end similar to the pretty Grande Punto's. The short bonnet, rounded corners and wedged waistline look very contemporary, and are designed to disguise the distortions forced on new cars by pedestrian protection legislation. Inside, there is more padding than usual in a mid-range Fiat plus some rich-feeling materials.
Fiat claims class-leading interior space, partly the result of similarly class-beating overall length; the Bravo is quite a hefty car.
Under the shapely skin lies a development of the Stilo platform, which was described at the time as a kind of modular, semi-spaceframe construction. Fiat makes no such technical claims this time, but is proud of the fact that the Bravo went from concept-freeze to production in just 18 months - a new record.
Engines now available are a 90bhp, 1.4 16v, two turbocharged 1.4 16v T-Jets (120bhp and 150bhp) and a series of diesels: the 1.9 16v MultiJet 150 and 1.6 16v Multijet 120 and 105 models. The Multijet 105 comes with an optional Eco pack to reduce consumption and bring emissions into the Band B tax category.
A Bravo estate car will join the range in 2010.
