Paint on the car

those puntos must have been in really bad shape, mines in quite good nick for a '95 N despite the nasty scratch on the rear door. It STILL outshines the mondeos, cavaliers and fiestas in the street :-)

Warwick wrote in news:MPG.1ee4348c245ded2a9896dc@dalai:

Reminds me of a Volvo 740 Estate I saw in the scrappy. It had been rolled big style, and obviously had belonged to a painter. All windows were covered in paints of various hues on the inside, and when you opened a door the interior was a melting pot of every colour under the sun on every surface. Nothing was left Volvo coloured, it was all swirly paint, no carpet, no headcloth left untouched. I often wonder what the driver looked like when he staggered out of the wreckage.

I had the lid come off a 5ltr can of white emulsion in the rear footwell of my cavalier. Amazing how quickly you can strip the carpet and seats out when you have to!

Ian

Not really, Fiats are pretty renound for their rust-problems. Many of these cars work fine in italy, but with our British weather...well it's a different story.

The punto is probably the only Fiat car that looks anything near decent, but under the bonnet it's obvious the thought just isn't there. Not having a go, just letting you know for future purchases ;-)

And you're talking uninformed bollocks.

Almost every Fiat group car has been galvanised / galvannealed since the late 80s/ early 90s..... meaning rust problems are a thing of the past and they're certainly *much* better protected than a Ford or Vauxhall of the same era.

Again, rubbish. The FIRE petrol engines and the Multijet diesels are known for being tough and reliable lumps. (The petrols do have a slight cooling weakness, but that's usually due to people not replacing the waterpump with the cambelt).

Had a friend bye a 2 year old Focus . Previosu owner had been a "naughty boy" so the ex girlfriend/wife had coated the car in paint and also chucked a load indside.

Paid £1200 for it , soretd the insidw with a interior from a salvage car an dthen the outside he left. Car is 6 yeras old now and drives perfect. A horrid looking thing , but for someone on limited income wanting to tget to work and back its fine

The electrics & the door locks are still keeping the faith ...

I fix quite a number of cars every month, puntos are always garaunteed to need work on them. Fiat didn't require bailing out by the Italian government for no reason! Their sales have consitently dwindled year after year. I'd go do a bit of reliable research before stating I talk bollocks. If anything is bollocks, it's Fiats :-)

You may want to check out what I'm driving, and what I've driven in the past before making comment.

I don't appear to have suffered any problems with the Alfa / Fiats I've owned.

Well it would make perfect sense to any semi-intelligent person that it's not only possible, but completely likely that many "not so great" car manufacturers will produce some rubbish, and some great works. Just because you personally don't say you've had any issues doesn't mean that the overall picture isn't affected - Fiats aren't great.

Understanding how statistics are collated and represented in as best a fashion as possible with no biased is important; and yourself with reference to the domain: italiancar.co.uk would suggest you're on the biased side.

Just for the record, I don't go by what I've fixed in my time, I go by failure-rates, general consumer comments (with obvious reference to the fact that people are more likely to complain than compliment in this country), and also the fact that Fiats don't fair so good in reliability indexes. If you're not already aware, they're long beed said to be on par with Rover in the industry, worse than (most) french cars. Shame.

Well, I've had a Cinquecento, 2 x Alfa 33s, Alfa 75, Alfa 155, Fiat 124 Spider, Alfa 156 and a Marea 20v.

Until the point at which I killed my 33 16v it never gave me any hassle that left me stranded, the Cinq. only broke down when the waterpump failed (due to me being a cheapskate and not replacing it at the same time as the cambelt) and that's about it. OK, the Spider was condemned because of rust, but that's true of a lot of 70s roadsters.

Stats. mean nothing.

One of the reliability sites says the Marea is the 6th most reliable car on the roads. Even I wouldn't rate them that highly.

They also have a low figure for breakdowns that leave people stranded and very low warranty repair costs. They may suffer from niggly little faults, but it's often nothing that means the car will break down needing a tow home.

I've had my share of niggles with my punto, especially in the first 2 years of ownership but as has been stated, it's NEVER let me down yet, starts 1st time, everytime, 106000 on the clock.