Afternoon all!

Still feels weird posting on here without the Panda, but all's well in Punto ownership world!

Just wondering if anyone had recent experience of trying to order a Panda recently? I only ask as my buddy was interested in getting a 1.2 Lounge with a few extras (Blue&Me for sure, can't remember the rest though, but nothing too outrageous).

Anyway, he has since ended up with an new Seat Ibiza 1.2 TSi (which looks nice to be fair). But his main gripe with the Fiat dealer was that they were insistent it would take FOUR months to order his particular car, and weren't especially helpful.

I kind of get that there might be a bit of overlap into Christmas, but surely Fiat can do better than that?

We ordered our Panda on 26th July - Estimate date for it to be at the dealers is 30th Sept.

Panda TA Trekking with Winter Pack, Climate Control, Side Airbags.

Yeah that's more like it, and to be honest you're having to factor in the summer holidays too - pretty sure the factory will have been on shutdown for some of that time. So perhaps it might have come a bit earlier if ordered earlier in the year, if you get what I mean!

Just a bit disappointed to hear that from my buddy. I'd put in a really good word for the Panda, and he actually said that he really liked it too.

But once he had to pay for all the extras combined with this ridiculous wait, it was a no-go.

It can't be any worse than my five month wait, crazy that I'm a few days away from the anniversary of ordering my car, but the anniversary of actually owning it isn't til Februrary! No regrets though, still completely smitten.

I saw somewhere that they were planning to pause Panda production for a few weeks as it's not quite as popular as they were expecting it to be. That might be factored in to add up to the 4 months.

Wee Smurf said:

I saw somewhere that they were planning to pause Panda production for a few weeks as it's not quite as popular as they were expecting it to be. That might be factored in to add up to the 4 months.

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Your post got me wondering...I remember there was a good website on a thread last year called howmanyleft.

Just found this for the Panda, it shows all new registrations per year in the UK (I believe this includes anything registered as a Panda, so includes 4x4, Trekking etc):

https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/family/fiat_panda#!newreg

So actually I think the stats may back your point up sadly. Not quite sure how up-to-date the figure is for 2014 registrations, so I don't know if this year is necessarily shaping up to be bad or not. Will have to wait until the new year I guess.

But certainly the new model appears to be a bit behind the sales consistency of the previous generation model since 2012.

I ordered mine today although it was through one of their deals and I was lucky to find a spec I wanted. They said it will be 2-3 weeks so presumably it is sitting somewhere in the UK ready to go!

Ordered sicilian orange 4x4 end of June. Including all mod cons, the lot. Arrived in the dealers today and due to pick up on Friday. Not bad considering Fiat Italia were shut during August.

U won't regret it for a minute!

Cheers!

The missus wouldn't go for the Tuscan Green, not quite visible enough on grey day apparently, so I thought, well, you only live once eh! It's actually supposed to be my new car but we'll see how that pans out.

As for the wait. All was quiet, not even a peep, until last week and suddenly ZZAP! it's landed in the UK and then CRASH it's here. Ready to rock and roll. It's going to feel a bit weird changing from a non-descript navy blue Subaru Forester to a bright orange Fiat.

Should be fun.... errrm hopefully.

Well I went from a grey Saab 93.... LoL