Category: City Cars 
Price Range: £7,350 to £12,850
Amusing to drive, ideal for city life, lively 1.2 8v engine, sharp handling, low running costs, plain and simple
Unadventurous design, lacks visual charm of Seicento, Cinquecento and earlier small Fiats, poor NCAP crash test scores
The Panda is not a technological tour de force, nor does it set any new benchmarks in the city car sector, but it's (almost) everything you'd hope it would be, and is in the spirit of earlier, much-loved small Fiats.
The 1108cc (54bhp) and 1242cc (60bhp) petrol engines are both well-proven in other Fiat ranges, and have generally proved to be pretty durable. Fiat does tend to score badly in customer satisfaction surveys and reliability studies, with its cars suffering various electrical/electronic glitches and minor quality defects, but on initial impressions, the Panda looks well screwed-together and constructed to a decent standard for a cheap car. It certainly feels more solid than Far Eastern rivals in the same price bracket.
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