I saw a video review of three small cars, one of them was Panda, with Mark Webber hismelf doing the driving and wording his impressions. It occurred to me, how silly is the world we live in and we don't even notice.

Imagine this situation. I am about to review a brand new Mercedes S type. Now Mark Webber, seemingly logically, criticised the three small cars like they are junk, not real cars.

This is my review of the brand new S class Merc.

Firstly, it's awfully expensive, the price tag is ridiculous, of course, it is a luxury car, but who cares. Only few people can afford it. Period.

Secodly, it is too big. Very difficult to park in our street even with its cutting edge parking sensor system. I can park my Panda where nobody else can do it.

Thirdly, it is too heavy. What if I run into a small 70s car? I kill the poor people.

Fourth , it is too clumsy on B roads, too wide and it doesn't f e e l very quick.

Another thing. I can't hear a thing. Does it have an engine? I have to rev up the thing to hear it. Not much fun.

When I drive 30 mphs the car feels as if I was stationary. Boring like hell. It is not a car, it is a luxury private plush train compartment where I can read, drink, listen to music, but there is nothing to drive.

And the last thing, if you don't have a garage and bodyguards, it will be difficult to keep the car. It will likely be soon stolen.

A tad biased there. Not a single point about what the car actually drive like.

Who is Mark Webber?

Interestingly enough the Top Gear presenters all like the Panda. James May even has one as his main drive. Clarkson said in the Times or Telegraph (can't remember which) that the Panda was one of the slowest but most fun cars he has ever driven (in 2006) and how he loved the Panda. Apparently he had one for a week to test, he expected to use it once but liked it so much that he used it the entire week.

I personally only drive in the Manchester area and in the small narrow congestion streets I really wouldn't want anything much bigger than the Panda.

However if I did a lot of motorway driving I think I would take S class thank you.

The Panda is also out classed by its newer rivals, but you can still buy them for £6k new, and at that price I think the Panda out classes anything else. The one thing I've noticed about Pandas is it is there is one in a drive there is likely two.

My neighbour bought one because his friend bought one, I bought one because my friend bought one, so sometimes it is common to have four Pandas parked in a row on my street and that is a wonderful sight.

My biggest criticism of the Panda would be poor MPG compared to its newer rivals.

JD82 said:

Who is Mark Webber?

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Is that a trick question?

:shrug:

ruinin said:

I saw a video review of three small cars, one of them was Panda, with Mark Webber hismelf doing the driving and wording his impressions.

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Have you got a link to this review so that we can evaluate it for ourselves?

JD82 - Mark Webber, Australian F1 driver, Red Bull Racing.

I knew the name, but had didn't know who he was, I don't follow any sport.

Being Australian that explains it, he probably dosn't spend all his time driving in crowded cities with Victorian streets designed for horse and arts.

Blimey, JD that is shocking. It's not any sport, it's motorsport. Webber is a current F1 driver for Red Bull.

Third drive if you can't be ar..bothered with the first two.

No idea why he says the engine "screams" but he's spot on with the body roll comment..

trackdayqueen said:

A tad biased there. Not a single point about what the car actually drive like.

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Of course, I am not saying Merc S class is a bad car. Its technology, design, probably all of it, is cutting edge. But my OP is about something else, about the silliness of the philosophy of the world we are living in. SOmeone somewhere decides that "the faster, bigger, more comfortable and heavier" is better. They don't have a clue, that it could be the other way round and that the smaller, lighter, cheaper could be better. Of course, what is better is relative. Of course, if you need a super safe luxury comfortable car that will take you from paris to Monte Carlo on the motorway without you having to make much effort or feel pain in your knees and feet (Panda), then by no means S class is in a different league. But arguments like body roll, or a small trunk, what if somebody doesn't care? To endure the journey from Prague to Valencia on motorways in panda, three days, was difficult, but by no means boring. It was fun all the time, a kind of sport. So when you get there, you are so tired you can just lie on the beach and relax. In the Mercedes, I would have to go jogging or climbing or hiking. In Panda, the exercise is there, and for free, almost.

Poor Mark Webber... criticises the cost cuts that make a small car affordable to the masses who are not so well off as he is but ignores the fact he got his tall frame into all 3 with ease! Mrs Ffoxy has a Picanto & it's a fun drive TBH, thrash it for what its worth & it corners like a roller skate! Yea the boot is small, more shopping goes on the back seat & in the back footwell than in the boot but it's a small car... I guess Panda scores well here?

Tax is £35 a year on the Picanto... winner... as I suspect the other are... maybe except the Proton with it's older technology.

Mark is like Clarkson, a good car has to get from 0 - 60 in less than 4 seconds & do close on 200MPH... any that dont are bad cars, I'll keep my bad Hyundai i30 thanks... but LOVED my Grande Punto to bits for it's character & fun-ness! Something else those 2 jerks forget about...

My brother has Mercedes CLK 320 and it is like driving a living room. It has much more power than Panda , of course, only to find that while you think you are fast and leaving the other cars far behind you on the motorway, a Skoda Octavia right behind you doesn't think so. When my brother hits the accelerator, I am not impressed, something has moved forward, but I am still sitting in the same sofa. In Panda, I feel the car has actually really moved forward with me. Plus my brother is trying to drive the car even slower than I drive the Panda in the city as he doesn't want to pay the high bills for petrol his car wants.

Not sure about the Picanto, but Clarkson has said many times in the past he likes the Panda and the i10.

I think Clarkson just hates cars which have no soul, and the i10 annd Panda do have that. They are cheap cars but they have made an effort to make them cheap without being nasty.

Probably safe to assume the 100HP would have been more up his street. But then if I had his money I wouldn't think much of any of them either.

lol at the ridiculous fuel guage in the Kia.

ruinin said:

Of course, I am not saying Merc S class is a bad car. Its technology, design, probably all of it, is cutting edge. But my OP is about something else, about the silliness of the philosophy of the world we are living in. SOmeone somewhere decides that "the faster, bigger, more comfortable and heavier" is better. They don't have a clue, that it could be the other way round and that the smaller, lighter, cheaper could be better. Of course, what is better is relative. Of course, if you need a super safe luxury comfortable car that will take you from paris to Monte Carlo on the motorway without you having to make much effort or feel pain in your knees and feet (Panda), then by no means S class is in a different league. But arguments like body roll, or a small trunk, what if somebody doesn't care? To endure the journey from Prague to Valencia on motorways in panda, three days, was difficult, but by no means boring. It was fun all the time, a kind of sport. So when you get there, you are so tired you can just lie on the beach and relax. In the Mercedes, I would have to go jogging or climbing or hiking. In Panda, the exercise is there, and for free, almost.

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I don't agree. If you can afford a nice car, you are going to buy a nice aren't you? If you don't care about such things, then all you are going to focus on is value for money which means a cheaply made bargain basement type car. Cheaper is certainly not better, not by a long shot. You get what you pay for.

The question is, I guess is if you could afford a better car than the Panda, then surely you would wouldn't you? I bought a 100hp because it was the best car I could afford to buy new and was the most fun for the money. If I had had more money I would have bought something better for sure.

JD82 said:

My biggest criticism of the Panda would be poor MPG compared to its newer rivals.

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Having traded my Panda for a newer rival I can say the Panda's MPG is bloody billiant!

My Dad had a 59 plate Picanto new, i drove it once (legally i might add) and it was slow as :yuck: but handles quite nicely for what it was, but had no where near the stated mpg.

He saw how much my Panda was better, 1.2 petrol. Much better on fuel, but didnt have the handling he had in the Picanto. (On paper he had 9 more bhp from a 1.0). He wanted a newer Panda so bought a mjet on a 58 plate, going for an older car and he's amazed with it I have driven this as well, as people have said it is laggy, but wow! get it in the right power band and the turbo kicks in Have to say though, the mjet has much less brake pedal travel, although that may be due to the larger calipers and vented disks, on mine they are quite sharp.. i find on an mjet you have to push harder.

trackdayqueen said:

I don't agree. If you can afford a nice car, you are going to buy a nice aren't you? If you don't care about such things, then all you are going to focus on is value for money which means a cheaply made bargain basement type car. Cheaper is certainly not better, not by a long shot. You get what you pay for.

The question is, I guess is if you could afford a better car than the Panda, then surely you would wouldn't you? I bought a 100hp because it was the best car I could afford to buy new and was the most fun for the money. If I had had more money I would have bought something better for sure.

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No, you don't know what I mean. An ideal (best) car for me would be as small as Panda is, as light as Panda or lighter, but it would have to take some shopping, bags, stuff for holidays. Peogeot 205 GTI or VW Golf Mk I. in excellent condition, or my Panda with a bit more legroom and a better driving position for a tall guy I am plus 20 HP extra. Definitely not Mercedes S class or something that heavy and bulky.

A dream car, really, probably 70s Porsche 911 RS, if the servicing was free and the car was in excellent condition all the time. It would have the room my Panda has and maybe as unconfortable for long trips as my Panda is.

Okay, well you are talking about for you. Different people buy cars for different reasons.

I seem to have recently bought my ideal car which ticks all the boxes, but is perhaps a bit stiffly sprung and unrefined compared to modern cars. But, I don't care about that.

Why don't you get a MK1 Golf or 205? Good examples exist probably for not much more than your car is currently worth. That is easily do-able.

One of the difficulties is objectivity vs. subjectivity.

The comment was made that Clarkson only likes cars that get to 60 in 4 seconds or below which isn't strictly true as Top Gear is simply an entertainment programme with cars and in all fairness the current format is infinitely more interesting than the old ones with Noel Edmonds and Angela Rippon.

But the programme recently voted Lancia as its most favourite marque of all time. Despite their reliability problems they were definitely innovators as were Citroen who also had problems.

Lancia have used V4s, flat 4s, in-line 4s and V6s. They were the first maker to use V4 and V6 engines in a production car. I think they were also the first to use a collapsible steering column and have also won more World Rally Championships than any other maker.

The Citroen DS and CX were years ahead of their rivals and if you pull away the boot carpet in almost any Rolls Royce Silver Shadow or Bentley made since 1968 you will find Citroen gas spheres for the suspension system.

So what makes a great car? The way it looks? Sounds? Drives? Makes you feel? How it makes others feel towards you? All or none of the above?

I like my Panda MJ and realise that although it's not the best car going it does exactly what I want it to do. A Mercedes S Class or similar would use too much fuel, not fit on my drive, would be a pain to park in the centre of Manchester and I'd soon get fed up dragging around an extra ton of car with nothing in it. The same would apply to BMW 7 Series, Jag XJ and Audi A8.

A Ferrari, Lambo, Porsche or Audi R8 would leave me paranoid if I went for a night out and would see me going outside every 5 minutes to make sure it was still there.

Just about the only cars it would make sense to have a GP driver evaluate would be supercars or BMW M3/Mercedes AMGs. Even an Audi A5 would be wasted on the likes of Webber.

If you would like an accurate evaluation of a "normal" car, ask an owner.