Automotive Business Magazine – Q3 2026 – Digital edition - Flipbook - Page 65
OPINION
CAR MODEL
Thoughtful design
touches give the
Grande Panda more
character than
many budget EVs
more appealing than the fake premium
grain you get in pricier rivals.
The one genuine daily irritation: the
open storage bins have no rubber liners,
so your phone, keys and loose change
spend every roundabout sliding about
and rattling like a cutlery drawer. Bring a
grippy mat.
Practical out of all proportion
Space is the Grande Panda's quiet party
trick. There's proper room up front,
and the shoebox silhouette means even
the back seats offer decent head and
shoulder room for adults, provided you
don't try to wedge three across.
The boot is usefully square and
swallowed a week's worth of clutter –
shopping, gym kit, the inevitable Amazon
returns – without complaint, and folds
down to something genuinely capacious
when needed.
The detail I loved most lives behind
the Fiat badge on the nose: a captive,
spring loaded charging cable, coiled like
a vacuum cleaner flex, that pulls straight
out of the front of the car.
No grubby cable to fish out of the boot,
no wet bag of rubber to store, and it's
long enough to reach a charge point
parked at either end of the car. It's the
kind of idea that makes you wonder why
every EV doesn't do it.
Undemanding, not delightful
Let's be honest about the chassis,
because it's only fair. The Grande Panda
doesn't really pull off the ride-versushandling balancing act.
The body control is loose and a bit
wobbly when you press on, yet the ride
itself is firmer than you'd expect, which is
the opposite of what you want. Normally
a small car nails one or the other; this
one lands awkwardly between them.
In practice, around town, none of that
matters. The steering is light, the visibility
is excellent, the dimensions are forgiving,
and the suspension is absorbent enough
over potholes and speed bumps that the
lack of polish never actually slows you
down or rattles your fillings.
The 113hp motor, which gets it from 0
to 62mph in 11.5 seconds, feels brisker
than the numbers in the cut and thrust
of urban traffic, and it doesn't have the
dead, overly heavy feel that afflicts a
lot of electric cars. This is a car that's
entirely happy pottering. It is not a car
that wants to be hustled, and it'll let you
know if you try.
And now, the range. Oh, the range.
The official WLTP figure is 198.9 miles.
The dashboard, fully charged,
optimistically promised me something
closer to 186. What I actually got, in realworld late spring driving, was about 140 →
Q3 2026
AUTOMOTIVE BUSINESS
65
