Wow! I am no longer a Panda owner, but I came onto this section to see if I could give any useful advice today.. And to see my old 2018 thread still going was something!
With the Exhaust on my Panda back then, I often got parts that either didn't fit perfectly (such as a catalytyic convertor at clearance pricing from ECP, but didn't fit - might have been for a similar car. We bodged it to fit, but it was a struggle). Other than that the rust, or inability to separate parts because of the age and rust also meant having to cut things. In my cars case, some bits were welded to a straight pipe that shouldn't have been welded. It was a bit of a nightmare.
There is a good case to do it right, and get the good parts (which are relatively cheap compare to other OEM parts - if you can find them). But also, if the car is older, a new part won't need to last as long as a factory part as well so if you can save the money it might be worth it. Took me a while to get my head around that but there's no shame in saving money on some of these parts on older cars.
I'd call Shop4Parts for advice on part numbers (and if you buy from them, use the forum discount if you've
donated). They were very helpful to me in 2016 when I replaced the shocks on my Panda in regards to understanding the part differences from the normal Panda, to the 4x4 and 100hp variants which weren't clearly labelled on other sites / sources. Very knowledgeable and helpful.
