TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
Remember those Kia-Ora-fuelled, matinee movies of yore wherein every party scene featured a gurl sporting an orange mini dress, white thigh-length patent leather boots and impossibly pointy breasts flailing through four bars of the ‘hitchhiker’ atop the grand piano before the action cut away to our hero parked at a corner table tugging suggestively at a Sobranie Cocktail gasper from behind a bad moustache and Reactolite Aviator shades?
No? Well, unless you’re still sufficiently poulet de printemps that pop art, G-Plan furniture and early Pizza Express décor constitute a trip down nothing more than mammary lane, 30 seconds inside Fiat’s new, ‘squircle’ infested Panda might just jog your memory.
I make no apologies for mentioning this distinctly retro design motif at the outset, because its all-pervasive -and hence potentially divisive- presence aboard the new Panda has to be a pretty bold call in the context of such an important car for Fiat…
This is only the third new Panda in 32 years and 6.4 million sales of the model, and it arrives at a time when the company’s European sales are under siege. Figures published by ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, indicate a fall in the Fiat brand’s market share from 6.7% to 5.1% over the last five years, with Kia and Hyundai stealthing into the frame, and the likes of Mini and other premium small cars all helping themselves to increasingly less dainty bites of Italian flesh.
Perhaps most significantly, now that the company has started to offer its cars at somewhat more realistic prices, the Volkswagen brand’s market share has pole vaulted from 10.2% to 12.6% over the same period. All of which, given the prestige perennially associated with the badge, suggests VW’s spanking new up! to be the one single newcomer destined to give the Panda the most cause for forecourt concern…
And we’ve brought them together in Verona not only because this picturesque city boasts Juliet Capulet’s balcony, the third largest amphitheatre in the Roman empire, fabulous coffee and some of the most demanding urban driving conditions in Europe, but also because we’re interested to see how the locals will take to the up! -the ever burgeoning shoals of premium foreign metal on their streets a clear indication that, once notoriously xenophobic in their automotive choices, even the Italians now give scant pause to thoughts of buying from abroad.
VW’s keener pricing policy brings a surprising parity between the two cars tested here. Within a model range priced between £9,400 and £12,250, the Panda combines a choice of turbocharged 84bhp and conventionally aspirated 64bhp iterations of its award-winning TwinAir powerplant, a 68bhp 1.2 litre petrol unit and the superb, 74bhp 1.3 litre Multijet turbodiesel with Pop, Easy and Lounge trim levels.
Priced from £7,995 to £11,180, VW’s up! range counters with 59bhp and 74bhp versions of a new, 3-cylinder 1.0 litre petrol engine, Take up!, Move up! and High up! trim levels, and two special edition models -Bla… No. Hang on… Wary of that old Al Jolson gag resurfacing (before taking to the stage he’s rumoured to have suffered from pre-minstrel tension), they’ve quietly re-dubbed them up! black and up! white.
Further special edition models are, I trust, inevitable. And, vibrating gently after perhaps one espresso too many this morning, we particularly look forward to the Colonel Bogey air horn-equipped up! Yours; the rally-fettled, roll cage-infested up! Side Down; and the integral changing table ‘n’ musical box night light of the up! The Duff. Be that as it may, if the up! were mine, I’d have the odious exclamation mark off the tailgate in short order, as I henceforth expunge it from the page.
Here, then, we pitch the plush, £11,250 Panda Lounge TwinAir 85hp against the special edition, £11,180 Up White. No further extras adorn the VW, whilst the Fiat benefits from an additional £400 very well spent on the company’s Blue&Me TomTom2 LIVE infotainment system.
Every second car in Verona is a second generation Panda; a constant visual reminder of what a hard act its successor has to follow. The new car pays dutiful homage to that appealingly pugnacious shape; trademark touches such as the small third window survive, and the whole –now larger in every external dimension- is blow torch-softened at every extremity.
If anything let the second generation Panda down, it was the veritable armada of uniform, battleship grey trim that hallmarked the inferior interior. Whatever your views on the squircle, there can be no argument that the finish and build quality of the new interior constitutes a stride forward of Seven League Boot proportions.
So ubiquitous is said squircle on board that I can identify the rear window winder handles, the lid of the portable ashtray and the steering wheel as the only elements to have escaped the full treatment. And judging by the residual squircle etched into the wheel rim, the designers clearly had to be restrained from going the whole Allegro quartic hog in that department too.
A tidy combination of colour and piano black adds class to the dash design and, backlit orange, the switchgear and controls are all well finished and give no ergonomic cause for complaint, even unto a handbrake design styled on the claw worn by the villain in Enter the Dragon, minus the sharp bits, of course.
Which isn’t to say that sharp bits are entirely in absentia: The Big Bin which dominates the passenger side of the dash is useful, and clever; despite also featuring a decent glove box below, the engineers have still managed to package both airbag and air-con behind it. What’s not so clever is that the trim band which circumnavigates the dashboard and defines the bin aperture is hilariously sharp on the bottom lip, suggesting that those who continually reach in to grub about for small objects may come to elicit suspicions of self-harming amongst friends and family.
Lest you forget what you’re driving, Panda is written everywhere. Though, adhering strictly to the rules of Boggle, it isn’t actually possible to spell ‘Panda’ with them, the relevant letters are even etched into the dashboard plastic. Sadly, this rather pleasing attention to detail is negated not by the irrelevance of its hard finish, but by a cheapening Back to Black sheen so overbearingly reflective in bright sunlight that said letters are clearly visible in the windscreen.
Retaining -as with its sibling Scirocco- enough of the concept in residual form to keep things interesting, the Up is a far more sharp-suited proposition. Finished all in white, and getting away with a modicum of chrome and a bonnet badge big enough to kick-start a Beastie Boys reunion, this special edition model looks as clean and crisp as a fresh drift of snow. Given the astonishing alacrity with which the front wheels picked up brake dust, however, I fear the inevitable hue of grubby slush might rapidly prove the norm.
On board, the depth of character which so obviously suffuses the Panda cockpit is substituted by the orderly, uncluttered, piano black and body coloured swathes of Teutonic simplicity. Backlit in red, the Up’s instrumentation and switchgear is predictably tidy, straightforward and easy on the eye.
Matching the Panda for minor glitches, the window switch within an unnecessarily drab door card design is sharp enough to peel potatoes, and there’s no passenger window switch in the driver’s door (an issue which the Panda obviates with centre console mounted switches). The door itself might care to close with a little Golf thunk than dinner gong bong, to boot.
A lack of reach adjustment to either steering column leaving the driver a tad upright for my taste in both cars, there’s little to choose between driving positions. The Panda’s seat is a big improvement over that of the 500, which always leaves me feeling partially devoured by a giant glove puppet, the Up’s offering just shading it with better lateral hold.
Both seats shun the proper flexibility of turning knob seat back adjustment in favour of the irritating, incremental lever, and the Fiat lacks height adjustment, leaving me sitting so high that the steering wheel cuts off the top of a speedometer already blighted by overt glare from its Perspex casing.
By contrast, VW commits the cardinal sin of leaving the entire contents of the Up’s instrument binnacle entirely invisibly unless you switch on the sidelights to activate the back-lighting, a schoolboy error which the company avows to be already en route to rectifying.
In the packaging stakes, the Up pulls off the impressive trick of offering 120mm more wheelbase length in a car almost the same amount shorter than the Panda overall. This gives the VW the edge when it comes to both loadspace capacity and knee room when sitting behind myself astern, but the Panda romps home with the urban-essential oddment stowage honours.
The Panda being a quattroporte and the Up yet to appear in similar guise, rear seat occupancy of the latter involves an ecstasy of fumbling with a seat slide and fold mechanism lacking both the convenience of a shoulder-mounted release lever and a return position memory. Over the course of just two days, it drove us quietly bonkers…
On the toys and equipment front, both cars are respectably specified, with such goodies as electric front windows and rudimentary air-conditioning fitted as standard. Both cars boast demountable infotainment systems which connect well with both car and phone, and may also be used on the stroll; the VW’s Navigon Maps and More included in the price, the Fiat fitting helm mounted controls for free, but asking £400 for a similar, Blue&Me TomTom2 LIVE system.
Whilst the Fiat system is a paragon of intuitive clarity and user-friendliness, the VW offering exasperated with its fiddly, recalcitrant touch screen and its efforts to provide ‘more’… Specifically, a bizarre, unsolicited enthusiasm of local history, with any sentence interrupted by a nav’ instruction automatically re-started post guidance. At one point, the dash bastard (unusually, not a Blighty-staple dash bitch) had five stabs at re-starting the same sentence, by which time the palazzo in question was 600,000 cobbles hence.
His pronunciation also leaves a little to be desired: ‘Now turn right into the Pee… aart…zaar Poor…taar Noo..ohh…vaar’. He makes Lloyd Grossman’s attack of irritable vowel syndrome seem positively mild.
To drive, the cars are poles apart. And that’s simply because, whilst the Up’s 1.0 litre, 74bhp triple simply thrums away to propel the little VW along at a not entirely handsome lick, the Fiat’s turbocharged, 84bhp TwinAir unit utterly dominates the driving experience, defining the Panda every ounce as thoroughly as Ferrari’s V8 defines a 458.
Granted, on the open road, dollops of lead foot expose the TwinAir as remarkably eager, undeniably appealing, and more fun than a bath full of otters. But there are issues: The stats claim a maximum 107lb.ft of torque at only 1900rpm, but the truth is that the engine doesn’t actually come on song until nearer the 3000rpm mark, making the proper oomph band quite narrow.
Matters are not helped by enormously tall, fuel economy-chasing 3rd, 4th and 5th gears. At 50mph in 5th, the engine is ticking over at just 2000rpm, unfortunately combining the sensation of riding a wet towel-laden washing machine with minimal response to a stamped throttle. Keen to reward the engine’s eagerness, I find myself using 3rd to get the Panda going, and cruising in 4th merely to avoid that spin cycle, all of which must relegate a promised 67.3mpg to the circular filing tray.
With a less aggressive but broader power band, the Up is more inclined to loaf, and is patently out-punched by the Panda both off the line and through the gears. This does, however, make for a more relaxed urban driving experience; a deal less stick stirring required to extract still perfectly respectable go and a fighting chance of getting far nearer a claimed 60.1mpg.
Sharing front strut and rear torsion beam undercarriage, neither car is presented in an ideal driving format; the Panda sporting winter tyres which relentlessly conjure understeer on a par with a charging rhino asked to tackle a right-angled bend at full pelt; the Up equipped with sports suspension which lowers ride height by 15mm and toughens the spring and damper rates to the extent that Verona’s cobbled streets elicit blurred vision and an amusing assortment of loose fillings, nits and nasal hair in the lap.
Happily, I’ve driven both specimens in the UK, the Panda Lounge on 15” tyres, the Up on 16” rubber, both standard fit. The Up’s unfettled suspension gives no cause for complaint, but can’t quite match the Panda for either its surprisingly pliant, comfortable ride or nicely weighted –albeit gently uncommunicative- steering.
Though neither machine’s 5-speed manual shift is as slick as it should be for urban work, the Panda proves slightly more entertaining to fling around. Then again, this has probably more to do with pushing harder to extract the most from that breathy little Twin Air than any specific shortcomings associated with the Up. Interestingly, though Fiat claims a turning circle of 9.3 metres for the Panda and VW a modest 9.8 metres, the Up ran rings around its rival in Verona, patently managing far tighter turns.
So, a decision… A learned colleague has suggested to me that the Up is a ‘better engineered car’ than the Panda. I don’t subscribe to this view. Remove the defining influence of squircle and TwinAir over the Panda’s styling and driving characteristics, and there’s less to choose between the two than you might imagine.
Clearly, the Veronese passer-by thinks so too. He may coo ‘bella’ all over the Panda, but his inspection of the Up is, if anything, even more rigorous. A comparison of Italian sales figures in six months time should prove riveting…
The car I’d like to drive off in is an Up with the Panda’s undercarriage, steering and infotainment system. Call me a square, but I’m afraid I was all squircled out the first time around, so I’ll still take the Up. Oh, and I’ll lay odds that, were the elegant little VW available when the Cygnet was hatched, Aston Martin would too.