So Fiat will be coming to America. I think I like the Panda, but would find myself unable to resist any car called a “Grande Punto.”
Seriously, they make some cute little good-for-the-city cars. Take a look and go down to your Chrysler dealer to get on the waiting list.
Wow! You mean there are still Chrysler dealers?
I owned an 82 Panda 30 once. This was the original Panda that had an air cooled 652 cc inline two-cylinder engine. The spare tire sat right on top of the engine. The car had automatic nothing - even the choke was manual.
It was simple and reasonably reliable, but I wouldn’t want to drive one here.
I do know the current Panda is light years away from this humble car - but I still see nothing in these Fiats that will cause people to rush out and buy one over a Honda, Mitsubishi or even a Kia, if they’re in the market for a small car.
BTW, my car looked almost identical to this, except that it was two tone tan and rust. 
Colour me astonished that Fiats haven’t been in America for decades!
Think of them as European SUVs - I once saw six Poles in one Polski Fiat 126p. 
They had a bad reputation by the time they left - this was at the nadir of their quality control.
When the Big Three have a better quality reputation than your company in the early 1980s - well, that’s trouble.
The joke was that Fiat was an acronym that stood for Fix It Again, Tony.
I sure hope they’ll bring the Fiat 500c. It’s just too cute to resist, even if I weren’t a fan of Lupin III. Especially if I could get it with the 1.3-liter diesel engine.
p.s. Autoblog Green has their list of 5 small Fiats they want to see.
At least the combined Chrysler / Fiat dealerships can save space by parking the Fiats in the beds of the Dodge pickups.
My first car was a Fiat 850 Sedan. I loved that car, I had no problems with it until someone rear-ended me slamming me into the car in front of me and accordioned it. My father had an 850 Spider and found another one for my older sister. For a while we were a Fiat family. I like them but I won’t be trading in my Toyota for one.
My first car was a Fiat 128 wagon. My parents bought it used, from friends, when I started my senior year of college.
Eventually, I forgave them (the parents, not the friends).
Numerous things had to replaced multiple times - like the windshield-wiper motor, the clutch cable… eventually the whole clutch. Something to do with the wheel bearings required multiple repairs also.
The head gasket required a 300 dollar repair 2 days before we were to drive to Florida for spring break.
The radiator required replacing.
This was on a car that had perhaps 30,000 miles on it when we got it, and was about 5 years old at the time.
I averaged 100-150 a month in repairs the entire time I owned it. It was 7 years old when I got rid of it. Even with a car payment afterward, I felt better-off financially.
My brother also owned a Fiat for a while (the Fiat dealer went to our church). It stranded us in Quantico VA when he was driving me back to college my sophomore year, when the clutch cable snapped (see above).
Fiats were such hunks of junk that the company had to give up selling them in the US 2 decades ago.
So no, I won’t be looking at any of those Fiats.
There is a world of difference between modern Fiats and those old rustbuckets. They’re almost boringly competent now. The current range is actually some nice looking cars, even if I don’t personally care for retro designs like the 500.
Huh. Maybe so - but they’ll have a lot of bad memories to overcome before many of them will sell here in the US.
I took Italian in college. In the language lab, we’d listen to (and have to repeat / respond to) tapes. I distinctly remember “La Fiat è pratica e commoda” (The fiat is practical and inexpensive). I always responded “La fiat è una cittrona azzura” (the Fiat is a blue lemon) (mine was blue).
Both Fiat and Renault were terrible a few years ago. Most of todays market would not have had bad experiences with them . They might get a holiday from the customers but the old problems better be gone if they want to survive. They were rust buckets and unreliable in the past. At that time VW made solid inroads into America. So the market was there.
I never understood the appeal of a car which is small, unreliable and and ugly when you buy it in the morning, and is small, unreliable, ugly and rusty when you get it home that night.
That said, my brother had a Barchetta until 2002ish which was great- simple, fun to drive, and attracted women like flies.
ETA: If they bring the Alfa Spider/GTV here I’ll buy one in a second.
I remember the Fiat’s of the 70’s and I thought my Pinto was a vastly superior car. Keep in mind I had no delusions about the Pinto. Ford’s motto was that you could get it in any color you wanted as long it was rust.
I’m sure they’ve improved immensely but I’m not going to be the one to find out.
My Maserati does 185. I lost my license, now I don’t drive.
I tend to like small-ish wagons and hatchbacks, so several of those models look nice to me.
However, I also remember the “Fix-It-Again” days, and for the past 10-15 years have been a Toyota fan solely for reliability purposes. So it would take quite a bit for me to take a flyer on a Fiat/Chrysler joint product.
Was it me, or was that site pretty impressivly uninformative in terms of finding out specifics - stats and photos - about the various models?
Tho our Seinna minivan is likely our next car to be replaced, the idea of pairing it with a Siena sedan has some fleeting appeal! 
That’s because it’s Fiat’s global site. Specifics are quite different across different markets, especially with regard to drivetrains and such, so you’ll have to wait until they have a US-specific website for stats.
For example, I doubt they’ll offer the sub-1 liter engines here, or more than 1 diesel model.
Cool. Makes sense. I just found it a tad frustrating when I would click on a model and not be able to see good shots of the interior, or something as basic as MPG.
