Why do Fiats have such a bad reputation?

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Why do Fiats have such a bad reputation?

Why? Strada. Chroma. 126. Mk1 Panda. 127. Rust. General build quality. Crushingly low residuals. They're made in Italy. People laugh at them. Not known for speed, handling or looks. They break down lots. They say Fiat on the front. (Fix It Again Toni?)

Need I go on?
 
Looks like someone was bored this afternoon :rolleyes:

Anyway,DMC matter what car you buy I can assure you there will be a forum with loads of folk complaing about them.
Mondeo diesels for example.....fuel pumps,tyre wear,rear suspension,heated front screens,door motors,window regulators,instrument clusters,etc....all known mondeo problems.Bloody fast though ;)

Good thing about alot of folk complaining about a particular car is that you know what to look for if your thinking of buying one (y)
 
shining wit said:
Why? Strada. Chroma. 126. Mk1 Panda. 127. Rust. General build quality. Crushingly low residuals. They're made in Italy. People laugh at them. Not known for speed, handling or looks. They break down lots. They say Fiat on the front. (Fix It Again Toni?)

Need I go on?

you arnt going to make a lotta friends here! :p

and DMC, the thing is, people usually come on a forum when they have a problem, not when its working well!
 
serin said:
you arnt going to make a lotta friends here! :p

and DMC, the thing is, people usually come on a forum when they have a problem, not when its working well!


But all valid points in answer to the original question, no?
 
well no, not really, is been a long time since those cars were made!

also, ppl dont laugh at cars mad in italy, i mean have you forgotten ferrari and lamboghini are made in italy! not forgetting pagani!

fiat, are known for good looking cars, look at the spider, 500, the panda was a wonderful design if you like you enginering and design, like all manufactures have some ugly cars, but most of fiats arnt!

abarths are known for speed and handling, as are things like the fiat coop, bravo and punto HGT

fiats are resonabley reliable, mines never gone wrong, and weve owned a few, its usually little things that go wrong!

the fact that they have poor residuals and that people laugh at them, is the reason why were asking this on this thread :p
 
But if you were to ask this question outside of a Fiat Forum, those are, broadly speaking, the replies you would get. They do not have the reputation as a well engineered, well made, quality product. Whether they are or not is irrelevant, they have a poor reputation because of the points that I mentioned originally.

Rover have (had) much the same problem, their last offerings may well have been good cars but they were percieved as dull cars that broke down a lot. Current Fiats may be stonking motors, but to most folk they are ans always will be ugly rustbuckets.
 
I love my Fiat :). Ok so the electrics have always been its major let down, well at least until quite recently anyway, but thats Fiat - who cares, were all insane anyway :)

But there great to drive, have ace engines (lancia), styling states away from a Fiesta, and a little Fiat badge on the back.

shining wit said:
but to most folk they are ans always will be ugly rustbuckets.
:confused: - i would look at the Proton Gen2, Perdua Kelisa, and Kia Rio first.

shining wit said:
Rover have (had) much the same problem
The difference is Fiat didn't keep producing the same mundane bodys, (25, 45, 75) ohh and the City Rover :eek: - i think people could easily re arrange the first word there. Fiat havent gone backrupt just yet anyway :)

shining wit said:
well engineered,
So what do you suggest?

shining wit said:
But if you were to ask this question outside of a Fiat Forum, those are, broadly speaking, the replies you would get. They do not have the reputation as a well engineered, well made, quality product. Whether they are or not is irrelevant, they have a poor reputation because of the points that I mentioned originally.

Rover have (had) much the same problem, their last offerings may well have been good cars but they were percieved as dull cars that broke down a lot. Current Fiats may be stonking motors, but to most folk they are ans always will be ugly rustbuckets.
I'm guessing you drive a VW Beetle Conv.? Unstylish and an image of being reliable and indastructable
 
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Rust buckets.....I think that award goes to 70/80s jap cars.Anyway you drive a car because you like it not just because someone says/public image or whatever or because it's cool....that is just plain sad,the word sheep springs to mind.

My top ten worst cars,
Lada's (all versions)
Morris Marina
Reliant regal/robin
Austin allegro
Ford fiesta mk1
Daewoo matiz
Renault Fuego
Yugo (all versions)
Trabants!
VW beetle/vans

Not a Fiat in sight & I can assure you I pledge no alliance to Fiat whatsover!
Its all about opinion,I have mine & you have yours.....seriously though have you nothing better to do with your saturday afternoon?
 
shining wit said:
Why? Strada. Chroma. 126. Mk1 Panda. 127. Rust. General build quality. Crushingly low residuals. They're made in Italy. People laugh at them. Not known for speed, handling or looks. They break down lots. They say Fiat on the front. (Fix It Again Toni?)

Need I go on?

Erm, not sure about that.

Croma:

Same floorpan as a SAAB 9000, Alfa 164, Lancia Dedra. Galvanised body, twin cam engines with a turbo option that was a bit of a flyer. Not popular with executives because it had FIAT on the front (snobbery at work here!), yet the SAAB sold well, the Alfa 164 confounded sceptics, the Dedra suffered like the Croma and Lancia pulled out of the UK. Yet they were all basically the same car...

Strada:

Not a bad car at all, and I think it was the first fully automated assembly line. The cars were built almost entirely by robots (remember the advert back in the 80's?) Early ones do rust badly. Mk2's were much better, but the damage had been done.

126:

The cheapest car in the UK at one point. A simple, no frills city car before the likes of SMART came along. Based on the old 600 with different styling. Allowed many people to afford a new car when cars were relatively much more expensive than they are now. Crude and basic, but people loved them. You get what you pay for! Now becoming collectable as the 500's/ 600's prices have gone through the roof.

Mk1 Panda:

Nice concept, but very early mk1's had dodgy rear suspension and terrible rusting. Facelifted mk1 was much improved and loved by motoring journalists. A cheap, simple, but cleverly designed car.

127:

Voted 'Car of the Year' in the 70's by one of the leading car magazines. Nice to drive, well packaged and designed. Agreed that rust killed them, but they weren't any worse than some of the other mainstream manufacturers...

'Not known for speed, handling, looks'.

Check out the Dino, 850 Coupe/ Spider, 124 Coupe/ Spider, X1/9, 127 Sport, Mirafiori Sport/ Abarth, 128 3/P, Strada Abarth, Uno Turbo, Barchetta, new Coupe and probably more before and since.

'Build Quality'.

Ok, not brilliant, but these ARE cheap cars. Try a Renault/ Citroen for shocking build quality. Or for that matter VW and Mercedes judging by the latest surveys!

Worth bearing in mind that FIAT own Alfa, Lancia, Ferrari and a few others for that matter. FIAT are the bread and butter cars, Lancia more upmarket and Alfa more sporty. Ferrari obviously supercars.

However, Fiat have always managed to put soul and character into their cars. Get a bad one and they're awful, get a good one and you'll never want to part with it. But that pretty much applies to any volume manufacturer to a lesser or greater extent.

'Rust'.

Virtually all new Fiats from the Tipo onwards are mostly or fully galvanised. Long before some of the other manufacturers started doing that. But as someone said earlier, mud sticks. But whenever someone I know says that Fiat still make rusty cars, I ask them to point one out to me. They can't...

'They break down lots'.

No more than any other car. How many major Fiat recalls have you seen of late? How many known design faults have Fiat been guilty of in recent times? Compare their record with some of the other manufacturers.

They are actually well designed and engineered cars, and in my experience most problems are due to incompetent garages and cack handed servicing by owners. A well looked after Fiat is just as reliable as any other equivilent car.

What Fiat need to do is sort out their abysmal dealer network and parts departments. Most people who own and love their Fiats feel very passionate about them. A shame the people who work in the dealers don't reflect that back...
 
The points I put were in reponse to the original question, "Why do Fiats have such a bad reputation?"

Those are some of the reasons. They may all be completely untrue, but that is what a lot of people think of Fiats.


Do you see what mean? My personal opinion is thet they are like most other cars - some good and some bad. But that is not most peoples opinion,for the reasons originally stated.
 
Blimey, emotions are running a bit high aren't they?

You don't have to tell me about dodgy Mondeo diesels - new fly wheel and new catalytic converter within 4 weeks of purchase; car almost 3 years old so just waiting for the rear suspension bushes to fail - plus all the other things these cars are notorious for. Its my own fault. I only ever went into the petrol section on the Mondeo forum and didn't know what I was letting myself in for. If I'd read the diesel forum first I would never have bought the car.

I still fancy another Italian car - had a 127, 1283P, 3xAlfa 33, and a Bravo 1.6sx - it's a soul thing. I'm sure I read somwhere that Fiat are frantically developing a new Stilo, or was it just an update? I think I'll wait for that.
 
Oh forgot about the clutches aswell and dual mass flywheels as you mentioned.The rear bushes are replaced as whole rear subframe assembly but for some strange reason this only affects cars in northern england/scotland....apparently its the type of salt used on the roads there :confused: Anyway despite this I kinda like them & recently enjoyed a 900 mile trip in the TDCI....nice (y)

Its a all new stilo due out late this year/early next year so I heard?
 
T14086 said:
Oh forgot about the clutches aswell and dual mass flywheels as you mentioned...QUOTE]

Are you by any chance a MEG member in disguise? ;)
 
Back to the Honda VTEC bit... its a bit of an urban myth about those engines, yes Honda have never replaced the VTEC parts but the engines do fail like any other engine eventually.
I really hope Fiat get their act together dealer wise and in their attitude to buyers, trouble is since the family run dealers went Fiat have been pledging to improve their dealers ever since. I was told in 1997 that the dealers would be really good soon!!!! Ive had 13 Fiat/Lancia cars and the only problems have been dealer based, the cars are superb (except Puntos)!
 
Do you all remember back in school, there was that one kid who did something in the first year that you thought was stupid so he was bullied all the way through the rest of school?? That is fiat.

I have to say i have owned a lot of cars in the past 7/8 years ranging from ford fiesta to citren bx. I have owned 4 differant types of fiesta, a golf, 3 rovers, an astra, a nova, a mini cooper, my presant punto and a few bikes in between and the only cars i have liked was my mini and my punto. The punto suprised me as all i have heard about fiat is they are crap and unreliable, and when i bought my punto i was actually looking for a corsa or a saxo. Now that i look back i think i made the right choice. yeah it is a big drop in engine size from what i am used to but i have had no major problems with her and i have had her for 18 months now.
 
T14086 said:
Bit like Skoda you mean? Even though they have some good cars in their range then name still sticks.

Skoda has pulled off a bit of a miracle. From being the butt of jokes - "Why do Skodas have a heated rear window? So you can keep your hands warm in winter when they break down and you have to push them" - to now being very respected and are ranked HIGHER than VW in the reliability ratings, even though their cars use the same underpinnings as VW's.

Worth bearing in mind that Skodas have always been well engineered, and in fact pre-war they were very advanced and respected. They suffered when control went to the Communists in the cold war - lack of money for development and seriously restricted by working requirements. The Estelle range, though antiquated was well engineered and solidly built. But being an old design they were laughed at, even though people who owned them found them to be good cars for their intended purposes.

Fiat is slowly improving it's reputation. Most of their cars are good, but they are let down by shoddy dealers and also inconsistency in build quality. Not as bad as they used to be, but there are still the odd Friday afternoon/ Monday morning cars being built.

Personally I think it is a snob thing, plus the rust legacy from the 70's. Fiat make 'people' cars much like VW did, and as a result they aren't exclusive. They are cheap(ish), available and mass produced. Anyone can own one, and as a result non car enthusiasts have them too. This means they get neglected and suffer as a result, leading to a bad reputation. Ford and Vauxhall amongst others suffer in the same way, but didn't have the reputation that Fiat had back in the 70's.

Then again, those that love their Fiats look after them and are normally rewarded as a result.

I never even considered a Fiat until a few years ago when I needed an extremely cheap car to keep me mobile. In 1998 I ended up with a 1986 Uno 45, tatty but running and with 75K on the clock. It had been neglected, but just ran and ran up to 105K when I had the chance to buy something newer and more sporty.

I had a few cars since, but never forgot my little Uno. In fact it was one of the few cars that I regretted selling...

Then in 2003 I needed cheap wheels again and found another 1986 Uno, this time a 45S model with only 62K on the clock. It's now done nearly 81K, and (touch wood) has needed virtually nothing doing to it. It needs the odd part changing every now and then, plus regular servicing, but for a car that's nearly 20 years old it puts a lot of the other manufacturers to shame.

Sooner or later I will probably want to replace it, and you know what? Thanks to the sterling services I've had from my two Uno's I will definitely want to buy another Fiat.

Compare that with my experience of Citroen (a 1991 AX GT) which left me thinking that I will never touch another Citroen again...

And yes, I get laughed at when people know I drive an old Fiat. Then they see the condition it is in, and realise how good it still drives and goes at 19 years old and they start to change their tune.

Best thing of all is when I tell them the fuel consumption (it averaged 62 mpg over 400 miles recently, cruising at 75 - 80mph on motorways), and also how much I paid for it. At £46, the whole car cost less than most people I know will pay for a tyre....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yes, Fiats previous reputation is still haunting them. But, more and more people are trying a Fiat for the first time and are becoming impressed enough to stick with them.

Maybe, just maybe, the tide is turning.
 
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