Tricky one. I voted Yes I'd by a second hand Fiat and "classic Fiat".
Only reason i said second hand though instead of classic being, there's a couple of cars they've made in the past 10 years i would have. But in reality, Fiat stopped being Fiat around 2000.
Their cars since then are just trying to be something they are not... German. There's very little natural flair or simplicity to their cars, Last Gen panda coves the simplicity part fairly well, that's around the sole exception of cars they released after 2000 that had one of Fiats core values as its main selling point. I like Grande multijet sporting's, cracking engines and fairly stylish to look at. Outside of that (without wishing to upset anybody... i'm very much "born in the wrong era" so have a different criteria to many car buyers), they just don't make anything that really appeals to me.
Current lineup is ****ing awful. All overpriced, bland and trying to move upmarket/be German... except the Germans do German cars better than anyone else, so what you're left with is basically an overpriced uninspired knock off built by Italians.
Models of the past decade... nothing ticks the boxes.
The Abarth's, don't get me wrong, are nice cars. But they don't fit my personal criteria of raw simplicity, lightness etc. They are too assist filled and too heavy to be true sporting cars.
The Stilo was the turning point, it was the car that Fiat first tried to be German with (but were too Italian to pull it off) :laugh:
They just don't have that flair anymore that brought us the coupe, the madness that brought us the Multipla, the quirkyness and perhaps over ambition that brought us the 5cyl 20v engine into the marea and bravo (and coop), or even the turbo lumps in the mk1 punto gt and uno turbo. There's not even any nod to their core value of making small, basic lightweight cars in the mould of the cinq, sei, panda, uno etc. A mix of safety regs and their insistence to go after the likes of VW along with everyone else has just lead them to being another boring car maker. Of which there are many.
And Fiat aren't even anywhere near top of that league, Vauxhall, Ford, Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, Nissan, Honda, Volvo, Seat, Skoda etc all have better ranges.
Hell, I'd say even Kia are now well ahead of them these days... who saw that coming in the 90's when Fiat we're selling 150mph turbocharged coupes and Kia were budget makers rebadging late 80's Mazda 121's?
