Hi All
The Panda Has now gone I'm afraid and a nice shiny new Citygo in its place.
We didn't go out to buy a Citygo it just sort of happened.

We had come to the end of the finance contract on the Panda and thought we'd go for something better appointed. The little Panda was really just a stop gap second car and was the basic model. And when fiat make a Basic model it's really Basic. I was getting a little fed up with driving with my head against the roof lining as no height adjustment on the drivers seat and not having remote central locking. The stereo was lacking in all the functions we like these days too. We kept it for four faultless years and at the end of the contract went dutifully back to the new fiat dealer in our area to see what we could get either against a better Panda or a Punto.
We'd been on the Fiat web site and they were offering £3k off the punto droping the price to £8900 or £1500 off a Panda so things were looking good.

To my amazement when we asked about these deals we were told by the dealer that they couldn't do them and we would have to pay full price.
The only deal even close to what we wanted was another Panda exactly the same spec as we had for a much higher price than we originally paid for ours too.
I asked about loyalty bonus having owned fiats for the last 20 years - nothing doing- take it or leave it basically, It was like they didn't want to sell us a car at all.
to add insult to injury they were only willing to write off the balloon payment we still had to pay on the panda and start again with no deposit. The balloon payment was only £2.5K and I new the car would end up on the forecourt at £4.5k, now I don't mind someone having to make a profit but that's ridiculous. so we politely bid our farewells and left.
We decided to pay off the Balloon payment and keep the car.

Roll on another month and Service/MOT time. I had to take the car to BSM as it was still on a service contract so all free .
walking through the Skoda Showroom to the service desk and was quite taken with the City go - A Special colour edition- metalic paint - black Alloys - Privacy glass - 5 Doors and that sexy new front end they've just updated. Plus a discounted screen price of £8900.
After picking up my car I went and sat inside and Yessss a full 5 inches of head room and all the toys.
To cut an already long story short - after a test drive a week later with the missus and a little haggling we drove off with the car - Final price was £7900 - £3000 part ex on the panda and £1900 cash back in the bank. (which I'll pay back into VW's flexible finance scheme as soon as i get the chance). and monthly payments of £130 a month. (plus free servicing for two years).

So whats up with Fiat these days????? don't they want to sell cars any more. And why advertise deals on their web site that the dealers aren't willing to offer????
Never-mind - loving the Citygo by the way .

Thanks for posting this. I would have guessed your Pop worth about £2950, and someone getting a good car there. If we're talking Bristol Street Motors they have no problems selling secondhand Pandas as far as I know. The Citygo is arguably the price it always should have been. Same applies to the Punto figures you came across. The Fiat dealer won't be one for much longer at this rate. New Panda 1.2 better value than secondhand for peace of mind. I've had 2 and it's reassuring. Everyone forgets in a way there's thousands of new car dealers out there. If they're not interested in your business there'll be another that is.

Al D said:

Thanks for posting this. I would have guessed your Pop worth about £2950, and someone getting a good car there. If we're talking Bristol Street Motors they have no problems selling secondhand Pandas as far as I know. The Citygo is arguably the price it always should have been. Same applies to the Punto figures you came across. The Fiat dealer won't be one for much longer at this rate. New Panda 1.2 better value than secondhand for peace of mind. I've had 2 and it's reassuring. Everyone forgets in a way there's thousands of new car dealers out there. If they're not interested in your business there'll be another that is.

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Yes the Panda originally came from Bristol Street and it was a very good deal at the time, hence why it was still on a service contract with them. They stopped selling Fiat in our area over a year ago, The new dealer just didn't seem interested in making an effort to sell us a car. Sad really.

A friend of mine has citygo and his has clutch and gearbox problems.He said his clutch doesnt fully disengage and its failing the gearbox bearing..A ongoing problem he says..Lets hope your stands up to every day driving..

I have a Citigo currently, it's coming up to 2 years old, and has been nicely reliable in the time I've had it, but I'm getting ants in my pants and am finding the Panda Cross really alluring...

That's a dreadful dealer experience. I'm guessing you're in Newcastle, Derby, Cheltenham or Worcester if you bought the Panda from Bristol Street. As far as I knew the offers on Fiat's website are ones which all UK dealers would honour. I know there's the 'participating dealers only' clause but I've never known one just flatly refuse to do a deal, especially when considering you were already in a Fiat

I'd email your experience to Fiat UK. You've voted with your feet and I don't at all blame you, but the dealer you visited needs a rocket up their ar*e for that behaviour!

Wehave good friend (who has no interest whatever in cars) who bought the Skoda a few months. It's a very neat little car, well finished, well specced, quite appealing. But .... a bit dull.

muttleysdad said:

The Panda Has now gone I'm afraid and a nice shiny new Citygo in its place.
We didn't go out to buy a Citygo it just sort of happened.

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I'd have done the same in your place.

But please stay around - we like having you here and reading your posts.

Perhaps we should have a new section for 'ex-Fiat owners' .

jrkitching said:

I'd have done the same in your place.

But please stay around - we like having you here and reading your posts.

Perhaps we should have a new section for 'ex-Fiat owners' .

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I'm not going anywhere soon. I Still have the 500 (now ten years old) and a 500L which is the main car these days.
The Citygo is just for local running around like the panda.

babbo_umbro said:

Wehave good friend (who has no interest whatever in cars) who bought the Skoda a few months. It's a very neat little car, well finished, well specced, quite appealing. But .... a bit dull.

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I quite like the Citygo - It has the 1Litre 3 cylinder engine in that's very lively.
I tried to take it easy and sort of run it in at first but with no mass in the engine the revs build really quickly in second and third which sort of took me by surprise. It does make it quite a quick little car off the mark though.

JTD_Liam said:

I'm guessing you're in Newcastle, Derby, Cheltenham or Worcester if you bought the Panda from Bristol Street.

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Yes one of them.

Had similar problems with 2 local Fiat dealers and ended up buying a Fiat over the Internet. I think they will sell a Fiat but only at their pre-determined price. Any "negotiation" is doomed to fail.

It was made worse by their both also selling higher priced Kias so their efforts on behalf of Fiat were token.

You have to shop around and be prepared to travel.

When I bought the last Panda, they had a dozen or so unregistered cars sitting in the compound - I got about 26% off list for cash.

jrkitching said:

You have to shop around and be prepared to travel.

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.......or prepare to be lazy like me. Our pre-regd Lounge we bought last year via Autotrader and was from a FIAT dealer 70 miles away. I simply agreed to give them a deposit of £200 and promised them £50 in petrol if the car wasn't right when they arrived. That seems a fair service for what was already a decently discounted car.

Admittedly, in these circumstances you have to be prepared to not have a trade-in and transfer funds when they arrive. But still.....some dealers obviously have a more modern approach.

Buying a prereg car is not quite the same as buying one that's first registered in your name; in addition to it (probably) having a little more calendar age, there are implications for consumer rights, warranty, servicing, insurance & resale.

Technically you're buying a secondhand car, and only have secondhand car buyer protections, so you need to be sure there's no repaired accident damage - cars which get 'showroom rash' or fall off the transporter are sometimes registered, repaired and sold on.

From a warranty & servicing perspective, whatever the warranty periods & servicing calendar restrictions are, they run from the date of first registration, so if it was prereg'd 9 months ago (admittedly an extreme case), then it'll need a first service 3 months after you take delivery to keep the warranty (and you'll only have slightly more than a year of manufacturer warranty left). You'll also need to do anything that might be required to preserve the warranty on transfer of ownership.

If it's been sitting in a field for months, expect to replace the battery within a year or two, and don't expect Fiat to pay for it. Pay particular attention to brake & clutch fluids; to protect hydraulic system component life, both should be replaced not more than two years after first being put into the car.

Most insurers will replace new cars with old if they're written off in the first year of the policy, but this usually only applies if you are the first registered owner, so the buyer of a prereg car won't qualify.

From a resale perspective, it'll always have one more owner on its registration document, so you'll never be able to sell it as a one-owner car. This will probably only have a significant effect on resale value if selling in the first five years.

If I had to quantify all of this, if the price difference was £500, I'd pay it to have a first owner car; if it were £1000, I'd take the prereg after carrying out a few more due diligence checks. Stepping back and looking at the big picture may help; I'd be less concerned if the dealer is one of the usual discounters that routinely buys surplus unsold new cars in bulk and has 50 of them for sale, than if buying a one-off prereg from a smaller franchised garage.

In the past, I've bought both prereg and first owner cars from dealer stock, and not had problems with either. In both cases, I'd do whatever I could to ascertain an approximate manufacturing date; these days, most components are date stamped so it's not that hard - the tyres are a good place to start as they're one of the last components to be fitted to the vehicle.

As always, due diligence and 'buyer beware'; if a deal seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

AB100 said:

I think the choice was wise..........

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So do I .

Each deal has to be considered on its own merits - you certainly got a good one!

That said, at list, it's a stupidly overpriced car and anyone paying that is going to lose a lot of money once it's driven off the forecourt.

It's a shame your local Fiat dealer was so intransigent when it came to negotiating a replacement Panda. I was able to negotiate with my local dealer using carwow and it was a fairly painless process in the end.

I guess Bristol Street are such a big company that they can afford to refuse a discount on certain models. The margin on a basic Panda is rock bottom anyway, so not much room for maneuver. Having said that, my local Vauxhall dealer got taken over by Bristol Street a few years ago and they went from being quite crap to absolutely appalling, so maybe you had a narrow escape!

The Citigo is a great little car. I had one as a loaner when my own car was last in for service. It's a tough choice between the Citigo and the Panda, but if the Panda had a decent engine like the Citigo, it would be an absolute winner!

I bought a pre reg Grande punto from Stoneacre in scunthorpe and they tried to add metalic paint to the price.Even thou i drove it away the same day. You have to be carefull..in the excitiement of a new car.

Paul A H said:

It's a shame your local Fiat dealer was so intransigent when it came to negotiating a replacement Panda. I was able to negotiate with my local dealer using carwow and it was a fairly painless process in the end.

I guess Bristol Street are such a big company that they can afford to refuse a discount on certain models. The margin on a basic Panda is rock bottom anyway, so not much room for maneuver. Having said that, my local Vauxhall dealer got taken over by Bristol Street a few years ago and they went from being quite crap to absolutely appalling, so maybe you had a narrow escape!

The Citigo is a great little car. I had one as a loaner when my own car was last in for service. It's a tough choice between the Citigo and the Panda, but if the Panda had a decent engine like the Citigo, it would be an absolute winner!

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Just to get things straight - The last Panda was brought from Bristol Street on a really good deal. Bristol street do not sell Fiats now, the dealer that refused to give us a good deal was the new Fiat dealer in the area.
Bristol street were the ones that sold us the citygo, again on a really good deal. They obviously know how to keep customers.
I don't want Bristol Streets name being sullied on this. They have always been more than accommodating.