500 New member with first Fiat

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500 New member with first Fiat

Kanka

New member
Joined
Aug 15, 2017
Messages
9
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Hi, everyone! Join the forum few days ago and bought my first Fiat! I'm not going to be a main driver, but will be the main man who has to keep it on road! So far I starting to like little girl more and more as days go by! I posted a thread under 500 section about my sunroof issues, but so far not much activity from members all I heard was bad things about car and seems like very pessimistic people, do not want to upset anyone, just how I feel. Maybe because of car choice?!? Do not know...
Well I'm very close with spanners so I enjoy to get car up to scratch and that's my plan with this one as well, will see how it goes. I think to start a progress thread about my car so maybe I can help someone or someone can help me... works both ways. There is lots to do on car mainly small things and some maybe bigger things.
Thanks to everyone in advance. Happy beans!
 
Not at all. All have been either cat d or c. I currently have two!
Hi, firstly to Kanka, who is likely to come on to a forum with comments etc? It will be people with problems looking for advice/help, they will sound pesimistic. I have a VW golf and have never thought about going on a VW forum because in 5 years I have never had a problem (that could be the kiss of death lol) My daughters fiat 500 however is different story.

But going back to UFI and Typecastboy, if I see an advert for a car that has cat D (never mind cat c), I skip over it. Am I being a bit hasty? Are they a bit cheaper because they are harder to sell, more expensive to insure?
 
Hi, firstly to Kanka, who is likely to come on to a forum with comments etc? It will be people with problems looking for advice/help, they will sound pesimistic. I have a VW golf and have never thought about going on a VW forum because in 5 years I have never had a problem (that could be the kiss of death lol) My daughters fiat 500 however is different story.

But going back to UFI and Typecastboy, if I see an advert for a car that has cat D (never mind cat c), I skip over it. Am I being a bit hasty? Are they a bit cheaper because they are harder to sell, more expensive to insure?
Why skip over a Cat C. They are more difficult to sell than Cat D's as some people "skip over them", but you really shouldn't.

In reality they are often less damaged than a Cat D. Most Cat C's are because an airbag has gone, which are cheap and easy to replace especially if its a seat one or a curtain one. I have now changed numerous dashes and passenger/driver/knee bags too.

Neither Cat D or C's affect your insurance whatsoever. There are some, very few so I understand companies that won't insure you but I've never had a problem and neither has anyone I've sold one to.

Cat D isn't mentioned on the log book, a Cat C is. You no longer need a VIC check on a Cat C. It's a very cheap way of getting a much better, newer car than you could otherwise afford.

Personally, I would prefer to buy a smashed up one and do it up myself than buy one already done. I did buy one that was already done with just a few bits to finish, but I took it all apart and put it back together just to make sure it was done right.

Thing to look out for is bent chassis rails. I've had 3 of those but they are easy to straighten.
 
Hi kanka, welcome.
As you can see as with all forums people go off topic.
It's my first Fiat too, so far i really like it, the 500 is without doubt a great looking car but it will have the usual italian car issues, nothing that can't be fixed by people like us.
 
I'm on my 19th fiat 500 [emoji3]
hello I am completely new to forums so have no idea what I am doing. I have bought my first fiat 58 plate, private sale and I have had nothing but problems. I have so far spent nearly £2K on getting things fixed and once again it is in the garage. It is a diesel and I have contacted Fiat but they are not interested as I bought it privately and haven't always taken it to a fiat garage. Any advice?
 
hello I am completely new to forums so have no idea what I am doing. I have bought my first fiat 58 plate, private sale and I have had nothing but problems. I have so far spent nearly £2K on getting things fixed and once again it is in the garage. It is a diesel and I have contacted Fiat but they are not interested as I bought it privately and haven't always taken it to a fiat garage. Any advice?

If you know little about cars always best to get a professional opinion before you buy can save your lot of money for a reasonable fee.
 
hello I am completely new to forums so have no idea what I am doing. I have bought my first fiat 58 plate, private sale and I have had nothing but problems. I have so far spent nearly £2K on getting things fixed and once again it is in the garage. It is a diesel and I have contacted Fiat but they are not interested as I bought it privately and haven't always taken it to a fiat garage. Any advice?

You've spent a great deal of money, may I ask what have been the issues and the costs?

I am not surprised Fiat aren't interested, the car is over 8yrs old - it sounds like the previous owner(s) didn't take the greatest care of it.
 
Hi, thanks everyone, did not get way some members started discussion about smashed ones, but never mind. After closer inspection looks like my one had some action as well, boot lid glass was changed and lid is bit iffy, front driver side wing and bumper... well never mind that's what you got when you buy car in the dark [emoji1] lol
Story was pretty funny actually, I found car, same model, but just different car, so organised my mate to take me to pick the car up after work as it was 160 miles road trip, so all sorted and we are so looking forward to road trip as well, so another phone call to seller to confirm we coming up tonight to pick the car up and he just reports "oh, it's sold, someone just bought and took it away" I was so pissed off, to be honest did not know about what most the car or rod trip which not going to happen, so just called my mate up and told him situation and he fell the same and told me, well you got 3 hours to find another car then... [emoji1] so we did, he helped me [emoji1]
 
hello I am completely new to forums so have no idea what I am doing. I have bought my first fiat 58 plate, private sale and I have had nothing but problems. I have so far spent nearly £2K on getting things fixed and once again it is in the garage. It is a diesel and I have contacted Fiat but they are not interested as I bought it privately and haven't always taken it to a fiat garage. Any advice?

Hello and welcome.

I'd be interested to know just how much you paid for your 58 plate car? How many miles? How long have you owned the car? Prior to purchase, did you check the MoT history of vehicle online? or carry out a HPI check, accident damage etc?

Current market rates appear to show a 58 plate diesel sells for around £3.5k. If you paid around that price and then spent another £2k fixing problems, sadly, you're now in negative equity on the car, i.e., you've got a 8 year old car you've spent £5.5k on and to put it bluntly, you'll never get your money back because even if you decide to sell it on, no one will pay any more than the current market rate for it.

Quite rightly, Fiat won't want anything to do with it, unless of course you're prepared to shove it into a franchised dealership and let them go to town on a full Fiat service, for which they'll charge you full Fiat prices, and from experience of 'haggling' with dealerships over service prices, they can charge upwards of £400. Fiat have absolutely no liability for your vehicle, especially one that may have rarely even seen the light of day at a dealership since original purchase.

I'm sorry you're having such a poor experience.
 
hello I am completely new to forums so have no idea what I am doing.

Hello and welcome :wave:.

I have so far spent nearly £2K on getting things fixed and once again it is in the garage.

Sorry to hear your recent purchase is proving more problematic than you had hoped for. The difficulty in advising you is that it's impossible to know whether this is the end of your troubles, or whether you've bought a lemon that's best sold on quickly.

...I have contacted Fiat but they are not interested as I bought it privately and haven't always taken it to a fiat garage.

I can't imagine any manufacturer offering meaningful help with faults on a 9yr old car. In fairness to Fiat, any modern DPF/EGR equipped common rail diesel has the potential to be an absolute moneypit once out of manufacturers warranty.

Current market rates appear to show a 58 plate diesel sells for around £3.5k.

That's about half the discounted cost of a brand new Panda :eek:. 500 residuals make these cars poor value for secondhand buyers.

WBAC are offering £2000 for a '58 plate 500 diesel with 80,000 miles, so £3.5k would indeed be a main dealer forecourt price for such a car. Sold privately, I'd expect it to make somewhere in the £2000 -£2500, if in good order.
 
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Sadly, the above story is one of the pitfalls of buying privately. Unless you know exactly what you're doing and you're willing to crawl around on the floor inspecting everything, or get the car up on some ramps and inspect the thing, you could be buying a whole heap of trouble.

But let's keep this realistic, the car is now almost 9 years old and it's going to have problems. It's not even inconceivable to suggest that it could well be scrapped within the next 3 years. That being said, I still see the odd 'R' registration Ford KA, yup, almost 20 years old now, but they look it, and believe me, they aren't without their issues either. We used to have one, bought it brand new in 1998, 'V' reg, steering pump failed after just 3 weeks and it bled out all over the road. We were stuck with that heap of rubbish for 5 years but I still blagged a really good PX on it for a brand new MX5, so all was not lost.
 
It's not even inconceivable to suggest that it could well be scrapped within the next 3 years.

:yeahthat:.

I'd say the 500 has a useful design life of 10-12 years. For most folks who depend on garages, running one beyond this could cost you more in maintenance than the monthly payments on a new one.

That being said, I still see the odd 'R' registration Ford KA, yup, almost 20 years old now, but they look it, and believe me, they aren't without their issues either. We used to have one, bought it brand new in 1998...

I had one too, bought new in 2002 and kept for just under ten years and 110,000 miles. It worked well enough whilst I had it; needed a new steering rack, one top mount, a minor bit of welding, and the A/C had packed up by about year 8, but the exhaust & battery lasted for the duration. Cost me about £900pa in depreciation & repairs, but the writing was on the wall for an expensive future. The powertrain was still faultless, but the suspension and chassis were showing their age, and the seats were collapsing. It would likely have cost at least that per year in maintenance going forward, so I sold it on for £300. Like yourself, I didn't want to run one into old age.

The Panda has thus far proved less troublesome than the Ka, and is considerably more economical; if it keeps this up for another 3 years, it'll have cost about £200pa less in depreciation and saved another £200pa in fuel, so the decision to swap was a good one.

Used 500 values are hard to justify using any kind of rational analysis. Spending £3500 on a near 10yr old car and then forking out another £2000 to fix it even makes current pcp deals look cheap.
 
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Wooo, this is crazy off the topic. One thing to remember people about car maintenance costs is: parts not even that expensive, labour is, if you can do it yourself, it's pretty cheap! First thing I done on my car was changed timing belt and water pump, cost me £70 plus couple redbulls and kebab [emoji23]
 
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