My shabby Panda 4x4 is now mechanically sorted and is called on for all sorts of trips and duties, ranging from nipping into town to hauling stuff to my wife’s horse field.
However, last weekend it did a six-hour round trip in really rough weather to Bike Park Wales (from Staffordshire) with two rather hefty e-MTBs on the roof. The car is probably worth £2k on a poor day and the bikes are worth £4k each all day long (about £16k to buy new). No wonder we got a few confused looks from other drivers on the motorway…
to be fair to the poor little car, it coped admirably, but it raised a couple of issues…
Firstly, the standard Panda 4x4 isn’t the finest-handling car to come out of a Fiat factory, especially with no-name Chinese ditch-finder winter tyres fitted. Adding 45kg of weight above roof height really didn’t help the handling.
Secondly, the standard Panda 4x4 isn’t the most aerodynamic car to come out of a Fiat factory. Mountain bikes are not known for their aerodynamic slipperiness either and combining the two definitely didn’t help the motorway cruise. On the M5 in the way down, we were pushing into a 20+ mph headwind, so we keep it down to about 60 mph. Going over the top of the Brecon Beacons was difficult - plenty of hills, twisty roads and the wind picking up to 30+ mph meant it couldn’t hold speed in 5th gear on the flat, necessitating frequent changes down to 4th gear.
fuel consumption was 33 mpg on the way down and 37 mpg on the way back when the strong wind was behind us, which I thought was acceptable, given the conditions.
despite 118,000 miles on the odo, it didn’t use a drop of oil and just shrugged it all off. It’s one of the cheapest cars I’ve owned in the last 35 years, but it’s rapidly becoming one of the best…
However, last weekend it did a six-hour round trip in really rough weather to Bike Park Wales (from Staffordshire) with two rather hefty e-MTBs on the roof. The car is probably worth £2k on a poor day and the bikes are worth £4k each all day long (about £16k to buy new). No wonder we got a few confused looks from other drivers on the motorway…
to be fair to the poor little car, it coped admirably, but it raised a couple of issues…
Firstly, the standard Panda 4x4 isn’t the finest-handling car to come out of a Fiat factory, especially with no-name Chinese ditch-finder winter tyres fitted. Adding 45kg of weight above roof height really didn’t help the handling.
Secondly, the standard Panda 4x4 isn’t the most aerodynamic car to come out of a Fiat factory. Mountain bikes are not known for their aerodynamic slipperiness either and combining the two definitely didn’t help the motorway cruise. On the M5 in the way down, we were pushing into a 20+ mph headwind, so we keep it down to about 60 mph. Going over the top of the Brecon Beacons was difficult - plenty of hills, twisty roads and the wind picking up to 30+ mph meant it couldn’t hold speed in 5th gear on the flat, necessitating frequent changes down to 4th gear.
fuel consumption was 33 mpg on the way down and 37 mpg on the way back when the strong wind was behind us, which I thought was acceptable, given the conditions.
despite 118,000 miles on the odo, it didn’t use a drop of oil and just shrugged it all off. It’s one of the cheapest cars I’ve owned in the last 35 years, but it’s rapidly becoming one of the best…
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