FIAT Panda - Advice on buying

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Mon 6 May 2013 01:24
FIAT Panda - Advice on buying - ptork66

I found a car I'm interested in buying, but I'm not certain it'd be wise. It's a 2006 Fiat Panda, 1.2 dualogic automatic with 9k miles. The low mileage worries me. Any advice on whether it'd probably be fine or not?

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Mon 6 May 2013 02:48
FIAT Panda - Advice on buying - daveyK_UK

Generally a good car and Fiat reliability has improved.

Fiat is no where near Japanese reliability levels, but its certainly improved in the past 5 years.

As for the Panda, have you checked out HJ review?

Also, FIAT owners forum is worth a look.

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Mon 6 May 2013 16:27
FIAT Panda - Advice on buying - 72 dudes

That is a very low mileage, which suggests either lots of short journeys or occasional use only (or both). Not ideal as it can lead to problems in later life. It depends how long you intend to keep it.

The Dualogic gearbox does have problems. There were some postings on here recently regarding problems this box suffered in Fiat 500s. They can become very jerky and refuse to change up, or in some instances keep slipping out of gear altogether, meaning the driver has to pull over, stop, and re-start the engine. Worse, Fiat seem to be in denail about the issue so can't really cure it.

Frankly I would advise steering clear of this one.

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Tue 7 May 2013 13:39
FIAT Panda - Advice on buying - oldtoffee

I'd completely avoid the Fiat dualogic box - my wife has a 500 (1.4) with it and I hate it and she puts up with it because she loves the rest of it. For it to accelerate at anything like satisfactory progress you have to put it in Sport and put up with the overly sensitive throttle setting map this gives you. My wife's has been in Sport from 10 minutes into day one of ownesrship. The changes up are quite violent, you rock forward and then back on every change. We now play spot the duallogic owner around town, its easy! Not so bad on down changes. Also If you accelerate hard for a second the box hangs on to the lower gear in like kickdown for 3 or 4 seconds, overrevving very noisily. If you manually change the gears up and down you can get much smoother changes as you can time your gear changes to your throttle pressure but its still at best average. Fiat have said they've checked the software and there's nothing wrong reported back but the "engineer" who did that also reported we needed new discs at the front and the front and rear pads were 95% and 80% worn at 30,000 miles when infact they were 60 and 30!

Sounds obvious but have you driven the car you're considering? If you have and you're happy with it just ignore my ramblings and pay some heed to the technical issues that 72dudes has highlighted.

Edited by oldtoffee on 07/05/2013 at 13:40

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Tue 7 May 2013 13:43
FIAT Panda - Advice on buying - Alby Back

For what little it's worth, my advice would to avoid any automatic which has less than 150bhp. Unless of course there's a pressing reason why you otherwise need one.

Small engines rarely seem to suit auto boxes although of course there may be exceptions.

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