Fiat Panda running costs and reliability

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• Mild hybrid Panda should prove efficient
• Fairly high insurance grouping
• TwinAir engines particularly thirsty in the real world

Low running costs should be a given with any city car, but you’ll need to spec your Panda carefully to deliver.

For a start, you really ought to avoid the TwinAir turbocharged petrol engine. Despite its tiny capacity of just 0.9 litres, owners regularly achieve around 35mpg in cars thus equipped – around half of what we’d hope for from a properly efficient city car. The mild hybrid 1.0 performs better, and you should easily see over 50mpg from this engine without trying too hard. Older models used a more basic 1.2-litre petrol which was similarly efficient.

• You can get up-to-date WLTP mpg and CO2 figures on our Fiat Panda specs page

The Panda ought to make a great first car, but insurance groups are high, with the lowest currently available being a Group 6. That’s not as useful as rivals in Groups 2 or 3, like select variants of the VW Up.

Servicing and warranty

Fiat offers three years or 60,000 miles of warranty for the Panda. That’s not as good as the five, seven or 10 years you’ll get with a Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto or Toyota Aygo respectively.

Servicing should be straightforward, though – Fiat dealers are reasonably-priced and routine servicing won’t break the bank.

Reliability

• No burning reliability issues
• 1.0-litre engine is new and unproven
• Hardwearing construction

The Panda’s mechanicals have, for the most part, been around for a long time – the underlying platform dates right back to the Mk2 model of 2004. That means that almost all of the kinks have been worked out and the five recalls since launch have all been relatively minor, affecting only a few cars.

We can’t speak too much of the reliability of the 1.0-litre engine as it’s brand new, but the 0.9-litre TwinAir is reasonably well-proven.