I spent £4k on a Fiat Panda 100HP – but it ended in disaster

Martin's 100HP cost £3800 with 80,500 miles on the clock – relatively low mileage for the breed The hot Panda is a joy to drive, but you need to buy very carefully... Meet the Mean Machine, my old Fiat Panda 100HP. It was my first car and, as it turned out, a bit of a brat. Because it’s a Panda, you might think you can run it on a shoestring, but you’d be dead wrong. It turns out Fiat went a bit mad developing the 100HP, fabricating new parts wherever it could get away with it. I could forgive a bespoke rear axle, given the move from rear drums to discs, but did we really need a special rear wiper? When I knocked the front bumper, a replacement (in the wrong colour) was £500. Then the car failed its MOT on its front wishbones – yet another 100HP-specific bit – and I was billed another £540. I grew a little frustrated with its ability to wallop my credit card, but every time I drove the car I was reminded how good it was. On one memorable occasion I took a wrong turn and ended up on the South Downs, giving chase to a Ferrari 296. This brief encounter summarised the simple joy of the 100HP. The 296 was plodding along completely normally yet, with just 1.4 litres at my disposal and that lovely dashboard-mounted, short-throw gearlever in hand, I had to really work to keep pace. With the throaty four-pot barking through the firewall and the speedo flitting between 30mph and 60mph, a bumble down sunny country lanes turned into a proper dogfight – for me, at least, for I'm sure the Ferrari driver had no idea of my presence. All I cared about was keeping crimson in sight. In such moments of absolute immersion, all its sins were forgiven. But when the weather took a turn for the worse and my brother wanted a lift home from the nearby tube station late one evening, I rushed out, turned the key and – achoo! The Panda had caught a cold. I was told by fellow 100HP owners that the weird noise from under the bonnet was just a foible of the starter motor, as it doesn’t much like chilly weather. That or it was on its way out, putting yet another bill on the horizon. Either way, it sapped my confidence in the car. Not long after I’d had a grand old moan about the Panda’s starter motor, a remarkably clean example of a Renault Clio RS 182 came up for sale. It’s a car I’ve wanted for yonks and the numbers just about made sense, so it all felt like the stars were aligning to give me a way out. I’d just started organising all of the paperwork in preparation for a part-exchange when the dealer asked for a 10% deposit – oh, and it would be non-refundable. When they then said they couldn’t send a picture of the Clio’s underside, alarm bells started ringing. I slept on it, only for someone else to beat me to reserving the car. C’est la vie, and probably for the best. Here’s the odd bit: the following day, the Panda returned to working completely normally, minus the start-up sneezing noise. I thought perhaps it was down to the weather – an unusually warm winter’s morning – but the problem was fixed. It’s almost as if the car was apologising, begging for another chance. Reinvigorated, I treated the Panda to a new timing belt, a service and a thorough inspection from Fettle & Finesse, the UK’s leading 100HP specialist. But all went south rather quickly. I mentioned that I was worried about the condition of the sills – a common issue on 100HPs, hidden away under the chunky bodykit. Then Laurence, F&F’s chief Panda whisperer, managed to pull away a wedge just by hand. Still, I didn’t think it would be quite so bad. The final report totalled three pages of A4. The sills, the rear axle, the front subframe, the exhaust backbox, the springs, the dampers and the passenger-side wheel arch were all on their way out. And the rear bump stops had fallen off. And there was a coolant leak. And so on… The bill was just under £2000 to get the imminent MOT failure items sorted, but if I wanted a more complete restoration, it might have tripled. I almost went through with it, but I just couldn’t justify pumping so much money into a car that I had already considered moving on. So I struck a deal with Laurence, recouping just about enough to cover the finance deposit on a nearly new, rust-free motor – about which you will hear more in due course. In the meantime, the F&F crew completely recommissioned my hot Fiat for someone else to enjoy. It’s now absolutely stunning.

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