2003 Fiat Punto Activ from UK and Ireland - Comments

Don't Know. It was a Europcar hire drive car picked up at an airport for a 3 day hire.

This was a nice perky car to drive. The interior layout, and position of the controls was excellent. The only flaw was nowhere to rest the left foot to the left of the clutch pedal.

The car was able to accelerate well and keep up with the high speed traffic on the M25 London Orbital motorway, and to be easy to handle in inner London traffic. At 70 miles per hour on the motorway the car was reasonably quiet, with good suppression of tyre and wind noise.

My only concern about this car would be the build quality. Some plastic trim was already hanging loose due to clips pulling out of place, and the tailgate felt as if it was made of quite thin metal. There were a number of squeaks and rattles and occasionally buzzing noises from the facia. This was a vehicle with only 6000 miles on the clock, so I would be concerned about how it would be at 60,000 miles.

UPDATE BY ORIGINAL AUTHOR.

I picked up another Punto 1.2 from car hire at Luton airport in September 2003 (not the same car as the orginal review!).

This one had 6800 miles on the clock, and it was interesting to note that the same bit of trim, at the driver's right knee, was also hanging loose just like the car I wrote the original review about. The panel is retained by large plastic plugs which appear to work loose and then never fit properly.

I have a 03 Fiat Punto 1200 Active 4 door, although in itself seems a decent car for the price, I have found it to be the worst car I have ever driven for 'blind spots', the R/H central door pillar makes it very difficult to see what is coming from the right at a junction or a roundabout, also the R/H windscreen pillar causes me the same problem, having to dart my head back & forward in both cases to look around them. I am of average height, so don't have my seat set at extremes.

I can't believe no-else has not noticed this!