Fiat Panda 100HP Fast Fleet test – living with a £2000 pocket rocket

After putting things off for months, I decided it was time to start ticking the Panda’s to-do list. First up, a trip to my local garage for a new wheel bearing so the Panda no longer rumbles down the road. This has also fixed the alarming torque reaction to throttle inputs in straight-line running.

Next job: new shoes. The original fitment for this car is 195/45 but some 100HPists go up to a 50 profile, chasing greater comfort as well as broader choice. Since the Panda’s ride doesn’t bother me I decided to stick with the factory spec, but if you put the reg into the websites of the usual suspects in high-street tyre sales they universally come up with the wrong measurements. Only Blackcircles.com seem to know the correct size and they had a surprising number of options, starting at 56 quid a corner.

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

I’m a bit of a stickler for originality so I took a deep breath and ordered the original-spec Goodyear Eagle F1s at £120 a pop. It’s a bit ouchy to spend almost a quarter of what I paid for the car on new tyres but this pain is soothed away by the warm feeling of knowing the Panda is equipped as its makers intended. It feels better planted on the road now, with an extraordinary level of front grip in particular.

Finally, my spending and mending spree led me to Small Car Services near Southampton to have the broken heater sorted. Normally this fault, a common issue caused by a tiny plastic spindle on a flap snapping, demands the dashboard is taken out to replace the whole heater box, and this would cost what I paid for the entire car. Thankfully, the wizards at SCS have worked out a way to mend the broken bit in situ and their solution is so cost-effective they get people coming over from mainland Europe to have it done. Happy times, I thought as I sat in their waiting room drinking their coffee.

13

But then one of their techs emerged proclaiming my heater box to be the worst he’d ever seen because, it seemed, someone in the car’s past life had tried to mend the heater themselves and made a total mess of it. Having delivered the bad news, the technician added that he wasn’t giving up that easily and disappeared back into the workshop while I fidgeted about front of house, feeling like I was awaiting news of a loved one in the operating theatre.

Twenty minutes later I could exhale again; against the odds, my heater box was fixed. Deep joy. My Panda is now quieter, grippier and warmer. Of course, none of this came cheap, but after a pricey few weeks I comforted myself by reading about the bills for Adam Towler’s Porsche in evo 309. He’s obviously spent a lot more than me, but is he having more fun than I am in my Panda? Well, I think that would be impossible.

This story was first features in evo issue 311.