Fiat Pandas

If you had to get yourself out of a big off-road hole, would you pick a £60,000 Range Rover, or would you go for a £10,000 Fiat Panda 4x4 and keep the £50,000 change? Especially as you could also get a Fiat Panda 100HP for when you're not getting covered in mud!
So here's what happened when Fifth Gear pitted the Range Rover versus the Fiat Panda:

Brothers Douglas and Duncan Doig are taking part in the Africa Rally, which will see them attempt to drive 15,000 km from the UK to the Cameroon - in a 23-year-old left-hand drive Fiat Panda.

They'll drive through France, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Nigeria, with the combined experience of one lesson on mechanics from a friend.

Find out more about the crazy trip.

At the moment, the 270,000 Fiat Pandas which are built each year are constructed at Fiat's Polish plant. But part of proposed plans to restructure the company could see building of the Panda take place in Italy.

The proposal is to shift half of production to the Pomigliano d'Arco plant near Naples in southern Italy. It's currently used for more expensive Fiat and Alfa Romeo models.

Which means in the future you could have a 50-50 chance of getting an Italian-made Fiat Panda.

The Fiat Panda Hydrogen concept car originally appeared in 2006, but has made the trip to Copenhagen with a number of other cars ahead of the upcoming climate summit.

For those interested, the fuel cell stack sends power straight to the motor without the need for a battery, and it produces 54hp and a top speed of 81mph, with a range of 125 miles. And using Hydrogen, the only waste product coming out of the exhaust is water.

There's a long history of Ferrari bosses and sporting stars owning a Fiat 500 to get around in, but it's always been a lot rarer for them to succumb to the charms of the Fiat Panda.

But reading an interview with Luca di Montezemolo, the 62-year-old chairman of Ferrari, SpA and of Fiat, SpA, it's revealed at the end of the article, that in addition to the standard Fiat 500, and the lovely Ferrari California he owns, he also a Fiat Panda, although the article doesn't mention which specific model!

So far it's di Montezemolo and Top Gear's James May as discerning automotive celebrities who have picked up a Panda.

I'm not sure Formula 1 star Mark Webber is in the normal group of people who would buy a Fiat Panda, but having him test the car makes for interesting perspective.

It turns out that he likes the interior, but not the handling, raucous engine noise, or windscreen wipers lifting from the glass when following a truck closely.




Read the short report on Mark Webber testing the Fiat Panda on the Telegraph website

The 2nd generation Fiat Panda has reached the 1.5 million mark for cars produced - with the notable car being built in the Tychy plant in Poland.

It's a left-hand drive 1.3 MultiJet destined for an Italian buyer. This year, 2009, a record number of 285,000 cars will be produced.

To put it in context, the VW Beetle clocked up 21 million over 65 years. The Panda has done 1.5 million in 6 years, since being introduced in 2003. So it's on track so far!