Hey,

i recently bought a 4x4 panda one of the last classic ones to be made from 2003
It has the 1100 injection engine. it's in pretty good shape but there is quite a lot of rust.
As i live in Slovenia about 10km's from italy there are plenty of panda's for sale.
I can buy a 2wd panda with the softtop and a really nice interior for about 180€
It has a lot less rust then my 4x4 so i was thinking to buy it and clean the shell up, weld up the bad parts and transfer the entire 4x4 drivetrain and engine.
As far as i can see the shell is pretty much the same? I noticed the fuel tank, exhaust and obviously the rear axle. But other then that i didn't see much difference. Has anyone done this before? What modifications should i do to make this work? Thanks in advance!

Hi there. I live in France, but want to do the same as you. I have 2 single axle Mk1 Pandas, but want to buy a rusty 4X4 and do the sa

....me thing. Did you get any advice on this? Thanks. Martin

The rear is essentially different - axle, leaf springs vs springs and all mountings for this, the propshaft mountings and sump guard mountings. It can be done, but you need to make all the mounts for the suspension, the axle and propshaft properly and accurately! In addition to fuel tank and exhaust etc as you already mention

A Marbella has a leaf spring setup on the rear already so may theoretically be better but I haven't tested the theory

If you're welding new mounts on for a drivetrain though then you can just as easily weld in new parts to fix a rusty car anyway!

Thanks for this. It sounds as though it might be easier to simply use parts from the better shell to replace those rotten bits on the 4X4. Chip chip, chisel chisel.