Fiat Punto 1.2 

Author's Car rating:   

Safety	Good
Comfort	Excellent
Road Handling	Excellent
Looks	Excellent
Features	Excellent

Advantages:	Cheap, reliable, fun !
Disadvantages:	Electrics !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full car review

Although I have resisted, I can resist no more the time has come, its time to enlighten you all to the virtues of owning a Fiat Punto. As some of you already know, I am probably the number one enthusiast of Fiat, with my present love being my trusty Punto called Fifi.

I know what you are all saying, how can you adore a Punto, after all aren’t Fiat’s the lowest of the low, the rust buckets of all cars, the cars that no one admits to liking! But I’m going to tell you exactly why you, like I, may grow to love a Punto!

My relationship with Fiats has spanned over the last ten years graduating through a total of 5 Fiat Uno’s. With Uno out of production, I knew it couldn’t last, I had to move on. Stood in Notting Hill at 4 in the morning on a freezing November night, with a gear box on the road, I knew the day had come, the Uno was dead.

Coldly I sent the car to be crushed and thus began the search for a new brand of car. Happy to jump off of the Fiat world I began a trawl through Ford, Toyota, Citron, Volkswagen, I think I saw, tried, considered every single make, type and colour of small car. Coming face to face with all the cheesy salesmen telling me their car was the best, theirs had the far superior performance all trying to entice me in to the unknown world outside Uno! After test drives and near misses, I returned to the world of Fiat and took a look at the Punto, once I had that first look, I never turned back, four years on and two Punto’s later, I think I’m ready to tell you all the merits of the Fiat Punto!

Price

So probably the most important part for selecting a new car has to be its price, well that is at least unless you are in the range of buying DB7’s or the only version of a particular Lamborghini in the world! A standard range, Fiat Punto will cost in the region of £7,595, well that’s what they say anyway, at the moment they are advertising £900 off, with a price of £6,695. But a little bit of advice for you, take NO NOTICE of the dealer’s price, as I mentioned earlier I have had 7 cars, 3 of which were brand new, but all of them were brought in a Fiat dealership, ALWAYS BARTER ON THE PRICE. The price is always movable, and if it really is their bottom price, then ask if you can have free mats, or free AA membership, free alloys, whatever you fancy. But remember a sale is a sale, all the dealerships have targets, and if you hit at the right time, they will do you a deal! When I brought my Fifi, I managed to negotiate £800 off the price, a set of alloys and as I already had RAC membership asked them to swap the AA membership offered as part of the deal for 4 car matts! So it works!

Performance

Now I’m no expert on this area, to be honest all I know is that some cars are faster than others and some have smaller engines but manage to move quite fast as they are light. And this is the category that Punto’s fall into. With a 1.2 engine you might expect a snails pace, but this car can hold its own amongst many of the other small cars. Whether pulling away at traffic lights or driving on the motorway, you won’t be left in the dust. My Punto can comfortably chug along at 80mph on a motorway and easily slope up to 85 with little effort. I don’t like driving too fast, so I couldn’t tell you the top speed, but acceleration wise it definitely feels as if it might have more than this to give. If you are driving around town, its very nippy and easy to manoeuvre around bends and sharp corners. However, if you do want more power Punto do have ranges (7 infact) which include 1.3 and I think a 1.6 model, obviously these will cost more than the price Ive mentioned above.

What features does it come with

As a standard, every Punto comes with electric windows, driver and passenger airbags, height adjustable steering wheel (comes in very handy) height adjustable driver's seat (which basically means that you have a sort of pump beside your chair that seems to push air into the seat and maneuver you up and forward!), central locking, Blupoint stereo, a 3 year warrantee and 3 years AA insurance. As I mentioned earlier, you can barter to change some of the things to get a discount or something else you would prefer, such as a CD player or matts. By far the best of all the features that comes as standard is the power steering. Although a tiny and pretty light car, I challenge any of you to beat the standard of power steering. The reason I say this is purely for a feature they have trademarked called ‘Dueldrive’. So what does this mean, basically it is a two part power steering. The first is your run of the mill drive around town light steering, but the second called ‘city’ is a feature you switch on and off purely for parking. ‘City’ only works when you are traveling at 5mph or less, so even if you switch it on and forget (very hard to do as it is so light), it will automatically switch itself off. Located on the dashboard, the ‘City’ button makes parking in very tight spaces a dream. No one can mange to park badly with this feature, like a feather the steering releases to a level that you can get a full lock with the movement of a finger. Brilliant, even if you never intend to buy a Punto go to a garage and try this out, you really won’t believe how light and manageable the car becomes. The car also comes with some form of breaking system, not ABS but a Fiat equivalent, it does have a name, but I just checked their site and couldn’t find it on there, but if you want to know, ask one of their salesmen. But to give you an idea, Ive never had a problem breaking even though often I am behind a car that does have ABS, so therefore, I’m either a fantastic driver, or the breaks are good! Ill leave you to work out which, but for you guys reading this I’m a girl driver, so I know what conclusion you will come to now!!!!! The higher ranges of Puntos now come with GPS systems and climate control to match any other small car.

Fuel Consumption

Fantastic, although a petrol car the petrol really does go a long long way! I think approximately 30 miles per gallon. The tank is full with between £30 – 35 and mine normally doesn’t need filling up for about two weeks, even though I do motorway trips twice a week of about 60 miles each direction. So pretty good.

Insurance

If you aren’t convinced by the fuel consumption, then believe me the insurance is good value. Fiat Uno’s were in the lowest bracket for insurance but I think the 1.2 Punto is in Group 2, obviously as with all cars the larger the engine the more the insurance goes up. But to give you an idea cost wise what this means, Ive been driving for 10 years, without making any claims. My Punto is now a year old, and the insurance for fully comp is just under £300 a year, I think last year it was £280. Obviously this varies according to where you live and whether it is garaged or not. But I think this is as cheap as you are going to get for a new or nearly new car!

3 door or 5 door?

Ok, now this is where you have to be really careful, I’ve had both versions and believe me the 3 door really is impossible to ever get anyone in or out of the back seats. The doors are so wide that you would imagine people would get out with ease. But here is the difficulty, firstly when you are inside the priority is given to the space around the driver and passenger, so even when the seats are forward, the space in the back is not huge. When the seat is forward, the doors still only cover the front, so getting out of the back will never be glamorous and is a combination of getting one leg out of the car backwards while keeping your head as low as possible. Not one to do if you are in a tight skirt dressed for a night on the razz! Bottom line is, if you are ever going to take any passengers in the back of the car, get the five door version!

Comfort and Trimmings

Well Ive told you already about some of these in the special features. But internally I’ve not got any reason to complain. The seats are padded and very comfortable. Both front seats can be contorted into a huge variety of positions that Im sure everyone can find the position for them. The seatbelts have variable heights to ensure you aren’t strangled. The radio is high in the middle of the dashboard, and forms part of the molded dash. Underneath that is the heating system, which consists of a dial to choose hot or cold or whichever setting in between and a lever to choose which location you would like hot or cold to blow out of at any one of four speeds. Besides this there are four air-vents, molded into the dash, one beside the driver, two centrally and one at the side of the passenger. There is a mirror over the passenger seat for those who want to do their make up in the car and a large storage space. All cars come with a car lighter and huge ash tray, with a compartment underneath perfect for storing sunglasses! The trims on the doors come in the same fabric as the seats, and again are padded with pockets for that A-Z or bottle of coke. If you do want a bit more luxury, Punto have a range of 6 different trim types, including Active, Active Sport, Dynamic, Eleganza, Sporting and HGT. The difference between one to the other are features such as special headrests, CD players, extra speakers, special carpets, etc.

Colour Range

Well need I tell you about the funky colours that the Punto’s come in. Aimed predominately at t young city drivers, there is a huge range available, with certain colours unique to every year. Choose from the standard range or that years special colour you really won’t be stuck for choice. Bright and breezy or sophisticated, Punos cover all of the ranges from copper to yellow to graphite grey to silver to shiny red to duel toned, you name it you can have it!

Reliability

Well my Punto starts every day, through hot, cold being left un-started for a month. And once it starts it really doesn’t stop. The only things Ive had to do to my car are the normal maintenance things, such as tyres and breaks. One thing I will warn you of now, which I haven’t actually experienced myself but a friend of mine has which is the exhaust. So the story is this, most car exhausts come in three parts, but in order to save money during production Fiat fit all Punto’s with a two part exhaust, basically the bit you can see and another very long part that connects to the engine. This is fine until the bit you can’t see goes, then you are faced with replacing the whole thing, which costs in the region of £150 plus to supply and fit.

Another part of motoring which Fiat are still having problems with are the electrics, which in a world with more and more electrical components being introduced in cars, they really do need to improve on this. Things such as wipers and heating will go wrong if you buy an older car or keep your car too long. The motors they install are week and the wiring seems to often create little qwerks!!! Although some are amusing, my old car from start to finish made the noise of a cow mooing, to repair once they go wrong can be a pricy business. So bare that in mind. Touch wood this car has been fine, but having experienced so many Fiats Im sure there will be something electrical go wrong at some stage during its life, maybe Im wrong and this has already been conquered, but somehow I
still cross my fingers when I think about electrics.

Rust Bucket?

Well this is what you are all expecting me to say, aren’t Fiats known so well for rusting. Well I can say the newer Punto’s definitely do not rust. Just have a look around at them as they wiz past you. Fiat has now caught up with the market and are producing cars which rust as little as all of the others.

Ok so I think that covers the Punto, my advice is don’t knock it till you have tried it. Ive had many a happy drive inside mine, and you have to say they do have very amusing ads, just think of the ‘Don’t don’t you want me’ ad….