General I've accidentally bought an 100HP

[StripeyMiata]

Hi,

Been a member of the forum for years, but my last login last March 2008. I had a FIAT 126 which I adored, and even raced it once (check out http://youtu.be/CPlDNXjYrZI ) but then my son was born in 2008 and the wee FIAT wasn't really safe to take him around in so I sold it.

We then got a JEEP Patriot as our sensible family car, and it was fine if a little dull and you could argue it was a FIAT since they bought Chyrsler

Fast forward to last week, we decided to get rid of the JEEP as while it was only 3 1/2 years old, little things were going wrong with it. Nothing major, but things that shouldn't be happening to a car that young so worried it would turn into a money pit soon.

The wife charged me to find a nice sensible family car around £4000 that did 50+ MPG and was big enough for the kids. She had in mind a nice diesel second hand Audi A3 or Golf.

I ended up with this:

https://www.fiatforum.com/gallery/showgallery.php?ppuser=10728&cat=500

She was a bit annoyed but has come around now she's driven it.

Will write more later about how I came to choose it, Top Gear is on soon so have to go.

 

[tenpastnine]

Hey!

Looking at the "Click here for all the cars I've owned since 1991" the Jeep seems random what made you go for that?

The 100HP looks brilliant


PS. Top gear was good tonight wasn't it!:slayer:

 

[Wee Smurf]

Spotted it this morning at the swimming pool...

New Orleans Blue is a nice colour for it...

See you in about 3 weeks :devil:. You're forgiven and can come back to the club = lol.

 

[tarbyonline]

There can't be that many of those over here! Often see a red one (or was it black) at Tillysburn roundabout.

 

[1.8Stilo]

Nice, always loved new Orleans blue. We got ours for the longterm to be used as a small family wagon!

 

[babbo_umbro]

Sounds as though you cam close to a change of wife there.

 

[tristanspeed]

I only bought mine because EVO magazine love it so much, I wouldn't have looked at it if they hadn't raved about it. I wanted to downsize, tested the Swift and the Panda, and the FIAT was just that bit much more fun.

You won't regret it!

 

[StripeyMiata]

Looking at the "Click here for all the cars I've owned since 1991" the Jeep seems random what made you go for that?

Well, we both like cars that are a bit different, the default thing to do these days is not to buy a Jeep if you want a 4x4, you get a X3/X5 or a RAV4/X-Trail etc, these seem to be the big sellers. We both liked that the Jeep didn't try and look like a car, it just looked like a Jeep with the areo of a brick. It was cheap, did 42MPG (well, ours never did, averaged 35) and big enough for our pram. We had just had a baby, my wife was out of work and the ST's 18MPG was crippling us, so it made sense at the time.

My wife give me the job of sourcing a car, because I necessarily knew what I was doing, but because I have Flexi time and could take leave at short notice. The Racing Puma & Focus ST were actually her cars so she does know a bit about them and had good taste. It had to be reliable, about 4 grand and more economical than the Jeep. She wanted a Golf or A3, but all at that price were either very old, hitting 100000 miles or both.

First of all I found a Scooby wagon, which you are now thinking "hey, you said cheap to run" but it was converted to LPG. But insurance was £850 a year so that was out. It was a lovely car though.

An Audi A2 was an option, I have a mate who works at Audi so made some enquires with the mechanics and the word came back not to touch with a bargepole, they only run right on super unleaded and if you don’t change the oil every 10000 miles the piston rings go. Build quality was not up to usual Audi standards either.

A Citroen Pluriel was an option, Lou and I have always liked them. I knew about the leaking roofs issue, but it seemed that even a car that had never leaked would someday decide to leak, and it was pretty expensive to repair, if you could find someone who knew how to do it. If it's out of warrenty Citroen just try and sell you a new roof at £3000. The 1.6 Automatic had software bugs in the gearbox that made it select neutral, usually when you where pulling out of a junction so that was out.

I did entertain something wacky for a bit, there was an orange one of these for sale - http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/cars/toyota_willvi.asp
Until a wise friend in the car business told me that it was a Yaris priced £2000 more than a Yaris from the same year and when I came to sell it in a few years or trade it in I was screwed so I should wise up.

Went and saw a Smart ForFour, a friend had warned me off but I still like the look of them, depending on the colours. Drove it and it drove OK, I wondered what my friend was on about until I tried to go into 3rd and it was a pig to get into. Both changing up and down into 3rd was a nightmare, it was undriveable. So that was out, also when I saw it close up I realised how cheaply made it was. Funny thing was, reviews had mentioned the unique character of the third cylinder engine and the noise it made, but to me it sounded awful winey and it had no grunt.

I’ll write more later how I accidently ended up with the Panda.

 

[tenpastnine]

Smarts are awful, you would expect more from Mercedes, someone at work had the little coupe 2 seater sport thing and it was just like a can with wheels

Good choice going for the Panda

I think if i had 4k to spend i would have choose either the twingo turbo or the panda 100hp, probably the panda 100hp as i have always had fiats.


I got my panda about 3 weeks ago, i was going to go for another cinquecento, but low spec pandas are getting so cheap now and there so many around i went for one of them instead, being slightly taller is better for getting my dad around and having the extra doors is a nice bonus also

 

[StripeyMiata]

I do like the Twingos, but wary of Renaults since my sister's slave cyinder went on her Laguna. What was a £90 repair on my MX5 was £1000 in the Laguna as you have to go to a Renault dealer to get it fixed as they have a special cradle to stop the engine dropping on the mechanic's head :bang:

Anyway, I never wanted a Panda 100HP.

What I actually wanted was a Panda Cross. After the harsh winter of 2011, I still like the idea of having a 4x4; The Jeep for all it’s faults was unstoppable that winter. 4x4 Pandas are rare, and it turns out the Cross model can’t be had for less than £7000. The previous model 4x4 Pandas start at about £3000, but there wasn’t any in Northern Ireland.

In the meantime, my wife had got the Jeep valued at We Buy Any Car. Everyone I had spoke to had warned me about them, that they offer a price and when you get there, they find faults and knock hundreds or thousands of pounds off what they offer you. Car was valued at £7300 as my wife said it has full service history, but it was ovcerdue one t so she updated the site so then down to £7112. Was offered £7000 at Kia dealer and £7500 at a Ford dealer for it.

So, I took it down, expecting a big fight with the WBAC rep afterwards. He went around car, drove it around the block and said it has a few paint chips but that's fine, needed 4 new tyres which computer calculated at £120 each (which is right for Continentals) so would offer me £7112 minus price of tyres. I said what if I stuck my own tyres on and came back tomorrow, he asked how much and I reckoned £70 a pop which was the cheapest I had seen them at and he said no need and changed the value of the tyres down to £70 each and recalculated.

So got offered just under £6900 cash and I got to claim 4 months Tax back, so decided to go for it as it opened up private sellers which we couldn't go for before as we had the Jeep. Overall quite happy with the WBAC experience.

While browsing the Panda’s, I saw mine. I knew a little bit about the 100HP as it was the bitter rival to the SportKa back in the day when we had one. And I vaguely remembered the 5th Gear episode were it was raced against a Ferrari 360. My main problem with the Panda was that my wife never really liked the styling of them, showed her the 100HP on and she actually liked the look of it. So phoned the guy up and arranged a test drive, the guy was also called Jonathan which seemed a good sign.

He and I hit it off from the start, he has had quite a car history, we’ve both owned Alfa’s and had a chat about everything that went wrong and he was changing his Panda for a SAAB 95 turbo as he always wanted one and now the company had gone bust the prices were dropping. Took it for a test drive and I really liked it, plus it had privacy glass which was a bonus as we needed it for the kids, my daughter hates the sun in her eyes. He was looking £4500, book price was £4100 but that was based on 50000 miles, this one had 28000. Full service history and he had all the receipts, haggled a bit down to £4400 which I was happy enough with. Phoned the wife, she said it was up to me, she did a HPI check which was clear so we did the deal. That was on Wednesday night, dropped the JEEP off on Thursday to WBAC, and money was in our bank by 3 O’clock Friday, we then went to his work with a brown envelope full of cash and picked up the car.

And then we hit a snag. Although she tried to hide it, my wife obviously didn’t like it.

To be continued....

 

[babbo_umbro]

Definitely a change of wife required here.

More seriously, we currently have a 100HP and a 1.2. The 1.2 replaced a MJ that was written off in the snow just over a year ago and Mrs b_u definitely preferred the MJ to the other two models.

 

[Golgarth]

And then we hit a snag. Although she tried to hide it, my wife obviously didn’t like it.

To be continued....

words of doom, been there before, it's easier to keep her in doors happy than fight it.