USED Fiat Punto Hatchback (99 - 07)

My car

I'm a Fiat nut. Therefore I love anything from the Fiat stables.

However, my Punto is fun to drive. I've fitted wheel spacers and the handling has been improved considerably. I'll recomend everyone who wants to get better handling to fit wheel spacers.

My car

My Fiat Punto was a disgrace!

During the year I owned my Fiat Punto, I can honestly not remember the number of times I had problems with it and had to have repairs done.

I had electrical problems, my power steering system had to be replaced, the CD player broke several times, had an oil leak, etc etc etc!

The service from Fiat was unbelievably bad. I remember one occasion I took the car in to get a service, and when I picked the car up the lights wouldn't turn off!

I can honestly say I was on first name terms with machanics because the number of times I took the car back to get yet another problem sorted.

My car

Belongs to my wife and is a great run-about on urban and local journeys. Low-ratio six-speed gearbox and snappy throttle make it very agile indeed (feels perkier at low revs than my Astra 2.2SRi).

Fuel consumption is also superb (never below 40mpg). Downside is rock-hard ride and the resulting cacophony of rattles plus vunerable drivers seat that frays/collapses on edge too quickly. Air-con also lost gas due to split pipe and the exhaust fell off.

My car

I have owned this car for around 4 months and so far have had no problems with it. It drives very well and especially with the 'city' button it makes parking an absolute doddle.

I have found the build quality to be very good i.e no problems to report so far. One niggly problem is that the dashboard lining of the passenger airbag doesn't meet with the rest of the dash.

All of the doors shut with a satisfying clunk making the car feel well put together. Fuel consumption seems to be quite good but as I sit in traffic every morning it cant be anything spectacular anyway.

The car has not been serviced yet whilst it's been in my ownership so I will have to wait an see what thats like. Overall very pleased with my first car!