My £2k Fiat Panda 100HP is huge fun to own, until you look underneath...

Someone from Kia offered evo the loan of a Picanto GT‑Line S, a small car with 99bhp and therefore as close as you’ll get these days to a Panda 100HP. After a week with it I learnt that, unsurprisingly, the Picanto feels more modern and more refined than the Panda, and that it rides more softly as well. What it lacks, however, is some of the Fiat’s frenzied terrier charm.

The Kia’s 1-litre triple is down one cylinder and 370cc on the Panda’s 1.4-litre four but, because it has a turbo, it’s got the same power and 127lb ft of torque, 30 more than the Fiat. As a result, you don’t have to rev it like the Panda and, actually, this makes it less fun. It also rolls more, has slower steering, and feels less lively overall. It’s still an amusing little car, it shares some of the Panda’s puppyish pugnaciousness in its styling, and it makes a good, if muted, noise, but it just can’t match the raw fun of the 100HP.

> Used Fiat Panda 100HP (2006 - 2010) review: a driver's supermini for under £3000

On the other hand, I imagine a brand new Picanto with its seven-year warranty would be cheaper to run than my Panda, which is once again trying to ruin my cheap-thrills plan with another trip to the garage. This was driven by the need for an MOT, but while it was in it seemed sensible to have the fluids changed and, for peace of mind, a new timing belt. There’s no evidence of when this was last done and, given the car seems to have had an interesting life, I’d rather know it had been sorted than find myself four months down the line being solemnly shown a tray of bent valves.

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The other issue that needed addressing was a worsening creak from somewhere in the front suspension, triggered most commonly by low-speed manoeuvring rather than vertical inputs like speed bumps. All evidence pointed to the strut-top bearings, a known weakness on these cars, and I hoped replacing them might sort a weird inconsistency with turn-in at higher speeds, which had become darty into right-hand bends while remaining stable and confident into left-hand ones.

So, the Panda went off to my local garage for what I assumed would be a series of very straightforward jobs. But no. An email came in from the garage asking me to call them and when, with trembling hands, I did, the news was not great. ‘Have you done anything to this suspension?’ asked Paul, the affable chap from the garage. ‘It’s just, I’ve heard your podcast and… you know.’ I assured him that the meandering amateurishness I bring to my weekly audio show with Jonny Smith did not extend to chassis set-up work on small Fiats and after that he politely accused ‘someone else’ of creating problems that included ill-matched nuts, badly fitted bushes and an anti-roll bar that was touching things it probably shouldn’t have been touching.

Rather than cobble it all back together and slap me with the bill, Paul said he wanted more time to work out what was going on. Leave it with me, he said. So I have…

This story was first features in evo issue 313.