what I find amazing on here is that people always look at other car makes with rose tinted glasses, as though they are somehow much more reliable than fiats, I have ran fiats since 2002, and yes they have had problems, prior to that I ran citroens, I owned two zx's without much problems, I then changed to a xara, which was a terrible car, when the car was 18 months old and 30 k miles the power steering pump collapsed at speed and caused a 1k damage to the engine, after that I had a piccasso, that was a pig of a car plagued with electrical problems, so I switched to postman pat doblo, which did 90k miles without fault. My late father paid 15k for a top of the range golf diesel, it ended up off the road for a month at 18 months old, in the end the vw dealers needed to replace the entire engine management system, it was out of warranty in the end vw paid as a good will gesture.
The worst problem I ever had on a fiat was a doblo with a failed gearbox, but it was nearly 3 years old, I could get fiat to pick up the tab, but considered I got off lightly at £700 for a recon gearbox and new clutch (from a gearbox specialist) so in my honest oppinion fiats are no more or less reliable than other makes.
The things that irrate me with the franchises are they dont seem to stock many parts that fail regular such as waterpumps on the multijets, so you end up waiting a week for them to get the parts in stock.
I did once own a new motorhome based on a ducato which had a horrendous water ingress problem in the engine caused by poor design, which took ages to solve, but this problem was also present on the citreon and peugeot vans.
The good thing about fiats is there is fab discount to be had when new, and if you look second hand you can pick up a bargain.
How come pig got a thanks and i didnt?
