As pace-setter, for their £1,000 track car challenge this month!
It surprised them with it's more than reasonable lap time!

They've used it for the last 3 months as a benchmark for their £1k Challenge. David Coulthard drove it to set the benchmark at the Race Of Champions challenge. Surprisingly quick little car actually!

Obviously it feels incredibly slow, after the cars i have had, but for what it is, it's a great little motor!

112 bhp now!
Still slow but even more fun!

Should gave got an AX GTi. 100bhp/800kg!

Not for what i wanted, though!
I wanted 4 doors and plenty of standard kit, including climate control, etc.

will you be looking at changing to the 500 abarth SS when that comes out?

I want 4 doors, so no.
But i might get the Panda Abarth and then tune it.

do you know why the 500 100 takes a second longer to get to 60mph than the panda 100? same engine and gearbox and the 500 is 45kgs lighter. weird.
unless parkers made a mistake.

only thing i can think of is that the 500 could have smaller/thinner tyres so cant get off the line as well.

Dunno!

being the geek that i am i have taken the liberty to find out from fiats official figures.
the reason is as i have guessed, panda has 195/45/15 tyres to the 500's 185/55/15. this must give it enough grip to make a second off the line.
the 500 engine has actually more power and torque than the panda. 73.5kw@6000rpm compared to 70kw@5800rpm and 131nm@4250rpm compared to 128nm@4500rpm.
hmmm stil a second is a lot to loose on 10mm of tread. the only other thing i can think of is that although they both have the 6spd gearbox the ratios are different. can you hit 60mph in 2nd gear?

I can, just, yes, at 7,000 rpm.

Remember, that few statistics are more pointless than 0-60.
Far more interesting is 10-80, 20-70, 30-90 etc.

yes, its nice to know the reason for why some stats are different though. having found you can hit 60 in 2nd is a good fact. i expect the 500 needs to get into 3rd.

Possibly, the Panda does respectable speeds in gears, for a 1368cc non-charged engine.
It will do 100 mph in 4th gear, out of 6.

i wouldnt mind one of those as a runabout.

Get it, but don't expect huge 0-60!