Fiat Panda review

The Panda is pleasingly old-fashioned inside, but Fiat has clearly commissioned its top group of interior designers to work on disguising old cheap interiors that are clearly past their best. The plastics are robust and unpremium, but designed with neat little nods to the Panda and a charming design that makes it feel less like you’re losing out to the accountants. 

Likewise everything is controlled by decent sized buttons that work well. Until you get higher up the range to the Red model, where you don’t even get a screen that your phone will sync with: instead you get a rotating plastic clamp to sit your phone on top of the dashboard. It has its occasional irritations, but the system works well enough. 

How big is it inside?

The Panda is plenty comfortable up front – the driving position isn’t particularly adjustable and the front seats are quite wide and flat, but you can live with it. There’s decent room in the back for adults on very short urban runs, but kids will be fine.

The boot is a respectable 225 litres with the seats up and 870 litres with them flipped down. The space is basic – flimsy liner, bare paint on display and metal seat backs – but then you’ll probably feel less bad when you’re throwing things about in there.

What’s the worst bit about the Panda's interior?

Our biggest interior complaint is that the cupholders inside the Fiat are clearly designed for espressos – you couldn’t fit a travel mug or a reusable bottle in any of the holders and pockets inside the Panda. Finding information on the dashboard or infotainment screen is an occasional chore, but such foibles should be expected from a city car as basic as this.

Wind noise is, unsurprisingly for such a bluff object, fairly pronounced, but in all likelihood you won’t be tottering up and down the motorway too often in a Panda. It’s just as quick to scamper across the back lanes – and muddy fields – instead.