1980 To 2003 Fiat Panda

As boxy as brutalist architecture and similarly defined by functionality, the original Fiat Panda is as much an industrial design classic as a collector car, and rightly so. “The Panda is like a pair of jeans, which are simple, practical, no-frills dress,” designer Giorgetto Giugiaro told La Stampa on its release in 1980. “I saw it as a universal means of transport, an object that in its functional essentiality allows man to move.” Over the next 23 years, Fiat sold 4.5 million of them. Not bad for a car conceived in two weeks in 1976.

The original Panda is still a common sight in its homeland and an icon of Italian culture. In 2019, one was exhibited at the Triennale di Milano. However, it’s the opposite of an Italian exotic. “The Panda’s charm is that it’s practical utilitarianism at its best,” says Panda owner Chris Gunning. The body is simple and flat, the windows are inexpensive flat pane glass, the dashboard is basic and modular, and as its creators intended, “There are no frills, unnecessary parts or furnishings—just a body, an engine, and wheels.”

Its shipping container-like casing didn’t please everyone at first, and in the 1990s, it was often viewed as basic transportation and nothing more. Still, it had mass appeal, and its unpretentious exterior and interior have aged beautifully. In the past decade, classic Pandas, especially the 4×4 kind, have started to earn collector attention and fans have started importing them to the U.S.. Still, while Panda 4×4 values have gone up, the car is the definition of an accessible classic, even if importing one yourself costs some dough.

To get the perspective of an owner who uses their car often, I met up with Gunning in Northern Ireland this summer for a tour of his 49,000-mile, almost totally original 1992 Panda. It’s his first classic Fiat, but probably not his last.

Back To Basics

Gunning bought his Panda about two years ago. He’d had classics before Opel Mantas, Vauxhall Novas, Toyotas, BMWs, and finally a Honda Prelude. But after the Prelude was written off during a theft attempt and family and work demands cut into his time and budget, he fell out of the classic car scene for years. The Panda, disused for some time but rust-free and stored in a heated garage, was an easy and cheap way back into classic motoring; while it’s quite small, it’s practical enough for trips with his wife and kids.

His car is a 1992 Panda CLX 1000 FIRE (“Fully Integrated Robotised Engine”). Its 1.0-liter engine puts out just 44 horsepower, but the car only weighs about 1,550 pounds and measures 134.2 inches long—six inches shorter and almost 1,000 pounds lighter than a mid-2010s Fiat 500. It was born to be a city car, but it has five gears, and it’ll cruise at 70 mph while returning almost 50 mpg.

Pandas aren’t sporty per se, and they look tippy tall on their skinny tires, but they are light, responsive and sure-footed. This is especially true of the 4×4 model, an unlikely but capable alpine climber and desert runner.

“It only took a good general service, a new set of tires, some new electrical bits, a mechanical fuel pump and new brakes to get her back on the road,” Gunning says. He added a modern electronic distributor and some 1980s wheels, but the car is otherwise stock and consistently reliable, but there isn’t much to go wrong. “It has no power steering, no power brakes, and nothing much in the way of electrics other than lights, a radio, a single wiper and a horn.”

Two Weeks In Porto Cervo

Fiat had a long tradition of simple, proletarian cars by the time the Panda was first proposed, most famously the 500 “Topolino” of the 1930s and the rear-engine Nuova 500 of the 1950s. By 1976, its most basic car was the 126, effectively an updated, restyled 500. Fiat’s then-CEO Carlo di Benedetti recognized that the 126’s aging design would need replacing with an entirely new vehicle, so he commissioned Giugiaro and engineer Aldo Mantovani, his partner in founding ItalDesign in 1968, to design one. While on vacation in Sardinia. In two weeks.

Giugiaro, then 36, got the call in late July, just before going on holiday to Porto Cervo. Di Benedetti’s brief? The car should be a roomy and “Rustic” box that could weigh and cost no more than the existing 126, and it had to be as simple to build and maintain as cars like the Renault 4 and Citroën 2CV, and a design idea had to be ready by August 7. The cost constraint was severe, but Giugiaro and Mantovani, who planned the mechanical bits, got it done, only to find Di Benedetti had quit in a dust-up with Fiat family patriarch Gianni Agnelli.

Hoping to salvage their efforts, they presented it to his successor, Nicola Tufarelli, who liked it and ordered prototype work to begin. The design’s simplicity was down to cost and function. The flat glass and body panels saved money. The tall shape and nearly flat floor created space. Many off-the-shelf components from Fiat’s other front-drive cars were repurposed.

The washable fabric pocket dashboard and modular instrument cluster looked good and made it cheap to build in right or left-hand drive. The comfy, simple interior fittings were so minimal that Fiat’s marketing boss wondered if it was the real interior when he first saw it—there was lots of bare metal. Clever use of fabrics and colors made the car look cheerful, not cheap.

Labor troubles delayed it about a year, but Fiat logged 70,000 orders after it debuted at the 1980 Geneva Motor Show. The name was actually a reference to Empanda, for the Roman “Goddess of the Rustics,” not the bear, but it prompted a letter of concern from (and a big donation from Fiat to) the World Wildlife Fund.

Know Your Pandas

Fiat built three different series of Pandas over 23 years. The original 1980-86 models are closest to the designers’ intent, and the most stylish, but the later 1986-2002 models are better to drive, with more power, improved suspensions, and more features.

The original version came as the (glacially slow) Panda 30, powered by the 30-horsepower 652-cc air-cooled two-cylinder engine from the 126, and the Panda 45, which used the Fiat 127’s 44-horse 903-cc overhead-valve four-cylinder. You can tell them apart because the 30 has grille vents on the right and the 45 on the left. It’s the same grille, just turned upside down—cost savings! In 1982, Fiat added the Panda 34, with a 34-horse 843-cc four, and in 1984, the Panda 4×4, with a 48-horsepower 965-cc four and a four-wheel drive system from Austria’s Steyr-Puch.

In 1986, the Panda got a major facelift to look more like the automaker’s popular Uno supermini and a new suspension derived from the one in the Lancia/Autobianchi Y10. It also got new engines. The old engines were replaced with a 34-horsepower 769-cc four and the single-overhead-cam 44-horse 999-cc FIRE. There was also a 37-horsepower 1,301-cc diesel and, though production was very limited, an electric version from 1991-98: the Panda Elletra.

In 1991, Fiat facelifted the car again, updating the electrical systems and adding a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT) to the four- and five-speed gearboxes it had used so far and a larger optional 55-horsepower 1,108-cc engine. In 1992, Fiat added a low-end version with an 899-cc engine, and soon after, the whole line got catalytic converters and fuel injection. The Panda remained largely unchanged after that, with production ending on September 5, 2003.

There’s also a Spanish Panda cousin, the SEAT Marbella. Built by Fiat’s former affiliate SEAT (now part of Volkswagen), the Marbella came online just as the two companies were parting ways. The Marbella had slightly different styling and a commercial van variant, but was largely the same underneath and remained in production until 1998.

Panda Life

Since it was designed to be cheap and basic, the Panda is an easy car to live with. Its main vulnerability is rust. Later cars are slightly more resistant than ancient ones, but they’re all susceptible. Parts for 1986 and later cars are pretty easy to get. Versions of the FIRE engine are still in production today.

Pandas are also cars where most repairs are simple, and learning to D-I-Y is relatively easy. There are abundant resources for help, including very active clubs and social media groups. “This is only my first Fiat, but I’ve become much more knowledgable about Pandas and other old Fiats thanks to the rabbit hole of owners’ clubs, groups and forums, of which there are many,” Gunning says.

Indeed, in addition to the massive Fiat Motor Club GB, there are even Panda-specific clubs and events, including Panda a Pandino, a huge annual gathering in Lombardy that regularly draws thousands of original Pandas and many of its series of successors. In the U.S., there are several Fiat clubs and shows nationwide.

How Do You Buy One Of These?

Now comes the hard part. If you live in Europe, buying a Panda is easy. With so many sold, there are hundreds for sale on the continent at any one time, and the little cars were popular in Japan, too. The Panda was never sold new in North America, which means all examples here are private imports that have arrived since 2005. They’re rare but not impossible to find. Importing one for yourself will increase your choices, though there are logistics and shipping costs.

The priciest Pandas are the 4x4s, which have already developed a significant collector following. These are the most common ones to find already imported to the U.S., and they range in price in Europe from roughly €4,500 for a scruffy one to €17,000 or more, but there are good deals out there. The best places to shop? AutoScout24, Lebancoin (for cars in France), and CarAndClassic.com.

Early pre-1986 Pandas and rare special editions like the Italia ‘90 (created for the World Cup) are valuable standard versions, typically costing from €4,000 to €8,000 in good shape. Panda 750, 1000, and 1100 models from the 1990s, like Gunning’s car, are the most affordable (€3,000 to €6,000) and easiest to live with.

Importing a car over 25 years old to the U.S. isn’t hard, but shipping and logistics are a challenge. Using roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) shipping from a port like Rotterdam, entry fees, and the services of an import broker, the fixed cost is about $2,500 to $4,000, but shipping and exchange rates can change. Plus, you’ll need somebody to get the car to the port.

The most fun way to do this is to take a trip yourself. While in Northern Ireland, I spied a £1,500 1994 Panda 1000 in decent shape. It could easily have been bought, used for part of the trip, and shipped via the Port of Belfast. Even if you don’t have time to putter around overseas, there are steps you can take to make the process easier, including paying for an inspection service.

Similarly, some countries, like the U.K. and Germany, have rigorous inspection regimes. If the car has a fresh MoT (U.K.) or TÜV test (Germany) certificate, you can rest assured that it’s recently passed a thorough mechanical inspection. Japanese-market Pandas also tend to be well-kept, and as many U.S. importers specialize in imports from Japan, they’re an excellent place to start if you want somebody to source a car for you.

In the U.K., Gunning says, the popularity of unusual classic shows like Hagerty’s Festival of the Unexceptional has raised the profile of cars like the Panda, sparking people’s nostalgia for the “ordinary” cars they grew up with. The Panda, he says, gets more attention now than his Mantas and Preludes once did. “Cars don’t have to be exotic or have a motorsports pedigree to attain classic status, and lots of people love cute, charming cars they remember from back when.”

In the U.S., most people encountering a Panda will be meeting the car for the first time. Having seen them draw crowds at Radwood and Cars & Coffee events here in the States, it’s fair to say Panda’s simple charms are universal.