Without the 500 Fiat would be gone from Britain I reckon.
Fiat always does this. When it introduced the old Doblo it got the engines totally wrong, then got bad reviews, and then it fitted the 'right' engines too late, and sales finally began to lift. But the damage was done for many people researching the car on-line as most of the comments they found were negative.
Then the 'new' Doblo came out a few years ago, and was too big - and far too expensive. How many of these have you seen on the roads?
Now the new Panda. Same story of far too complicated spec options, and anyway far too expensive. It is being killed by the Up famly and the Picanto et al, which sell a couple of thousand cheaper, and with far less complicated options systems.
And now that the Fiat factories are on extended 'temporary' closure you can't buy the Panda you want anyway, even if you can afford it
Next year Renault will begin to bring in a range of very competent Dacia cars, which will replace Fiat, and the Koreans, as the cheap and cheerful, and clever, choice for people who want a good inexpensive car. And apparantly Dacia is very profitable too. Cheap and amortised old bits fitted into simple robust cars with no particular pretensions of fashionablity must be working for tens of thousands of people who just want to get about cheaply.
And yet Fiat is desperate to move upmarket where the big profits supposedly are. Just offering lots of confusing options and charging more isn't enough though. The world economy is flatlining and will continue to do so, so Fiat had better find a way build cars more cheaply and cut prices - soon.
