A tale of two Panda's.

[paul-o5f9h]

In todays world good oil and engine design has not made us afraid of big mileage. A quick look through the ads gives us cars from 0 to over 200k in miles. Most of these are cars you expect to see on motorways flashing past you, and a great deal of them will of course be german. I say this because we would never look at a small Italian car being capable of doing this, its either rusty or blown up, let me give you the antidote to this theory.....
My Pal and I have always had nice cars and sometimes even bought them for each other, I have a Maserati Quattraporte GTS and Paul has my old MB E55 AMG, so we are not short of power! problem is occasionally a quick trip to the shops can increase the cost of any item if you factor in the fuel.... So we decided to buy "Second" cars just as a cheap run around, but being us they had to be fun.... also on a budget ! I bought a grey Panda 100hp and really enjoyed it for two months then a young man desperate to show his girlfriend how fast his mothers new golf would go in the wet, well lets say he had an accident. Interesting fact here was that yes the Panda died instantly, but so did the 2016 model Golf. With the insurance claim sorted and the management company Toyota "no Go' becoming a pain I scoured every web site looking for the perfect Panda 100hp. Now this might seem to be easy but its not. There are varying conditions that perhaps the owners don't see, yes they are quite firm but not to the point of all the oil out of the dampers... Also a good history is perhaps more important on a small car so it became the holy grail and after much looking I found my white beauty. She had been the first owners dream as it had very single option on it and a couple of plus's. This car was 10k new but mine was closer to 14k when all was factored in, Glass pan roof, Upgraded hifi with 6 speakers plus sub under drivers seat (Massage feature when listening to bass tracks!) , Switchable traction and ABS and an "Abarth pack".
This basically was an add on at dealers and consisted of stiffer front and real roll bars (Like it needs that!), 10mm lower springs (That as well!) and 10% more power which we all know matters. After looking at various cars this was to be the one, it needed some paint as it had a flaky bonnet but everything was good and the file that came with it was from day one and all main dealer, two private owners, cam belts done and 4 premium tyres, the down side was 102k miles.... I thought it was worth the risk, glad I did, now nearly three years on it has 125k and just continues to give unbelievable service. I have just driven it from Plymouth to dover, then Calais to the south of france at an average speed of 60 and fuel at 37.9mpg... This required cruising 80 / 90 most of the time (Obviously not in the UK!) and arrived after nearly 1000 miles happy and safe. So this I think is fantastic, but wait theres more, When I had my first Panda I explained to my mate it was the thing to have as it tickled our need for fun (Nothing like seeing a BMW driver look in his mirror and go WTF as you are all over him in the corners!!) and was cheap to run thus giving us more funds to give the Maserati and MB dealers !! So the search was on but the budget was even less as my mate needed to be convinced. Again much searching could not find the right car until an advert showed up with a blue car with 171k miles..... but one owner. It had to be checked. A trip up the dreaded M11 and I found it in a small garage and it was a local car which the owner had used to drive from the midlands to scotland and back every week. A quick look at it and all seemed good, in fact I had seen a lot worse at 35k so a quick drive showed that this was still a good car, no knocks or rattles, no sloppy gears and a very peepy engine. Back at the garage the guy brings out the file, again this is an owner who kept everything from day one and all dealer. cam belts and pumps done recently, well with some serious haggling it was ours... So as you can see the smiles above are genuine happy owners and yes between them they have over 300k but the old Fiat joke was "Fix It Again Tony" we prefer "Fun Its Always Terrific" so the moral of the story is as with any car do some research and history history history is the safest route.

[SloppyClock]

It's a good point and that good maintenance and use is hopefully all that is needed, just as it is with most other things in life.

But please space out your paragraphs more, I found this incredibly difficult to read an had to re-read the same sentences a few times due to the words all merging into one blob.

[SirGriffin]

Great cars, and proof indeed that high motorway mileage is no hardship to a car with good maintenance. I fancy a Panda next when the Vectra goes pop.