My twelfth choice of car was the somewhat strange Panda 4x4, which as it turned out was the slowest car I have ever owned. Its 0-60 time was about 19 seconds which seemed like an eternity when everyone else was racing away from you, the top speed was not a lot better either at 84 mph, so even keeping up with motorway traffic was a real challenge ! The one thing the car excelled at was green-laneing which was becoming popular at the time, the one thing the car lacked to do this properly was ground clearance as I always seemed to be removing clods of earth from the central propshaft guard. One point that someone made to me years ago was that 4wd vehicles are no different to normal vehicles off road, you are just able to get stuck in more remote places, fortunately I never did get completely stuck but there were a few close calls when the farmers ruts on the ridgeway got too deep for my little wheels !

Its four wheel drive system had no central differential so the 50/50 torque split made things very agricutural if you kept it engaged whilst on tarmac, but if it had rained the car became an absolute hoot as everyone else had to slow down to avoid understeering off the road, but the 4wd made the Panda grip wildly, suprising many a rep with its 'no need to use the brakes for this one' roundabout potential. If 4wd was engaged though the main trade off was even poorer performance so the people you had just left behind could catch up very quickly.

Perhaps the best thing about these cars is the fact that they have the 50bhp 965cc engine (relative of the 903cc engine used in the 127 mk1 and many other Fiats) which is also used in the 70bhp Autobianchi Abarth, so for the price of a new camshaft and caburettor plus some other bits a big power upgrade could be achieved, which would make the car much more usable on todays roads. I never did this prefering to trade the car in for my next car.

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