1998 Fiat Punto Sporting review from UK and Ireland

This little car has been quite reliable, however, refused to start one damp morning as the fuel injection relay had developed a fault. Fairly easy to replace, but I had to get the bus to work that day!

When I first purchased the car it suffered from intermittent power loss under acceleration. Turned out that the HT leads were at fault, and were rather expensive to replace too (£60 for the leads alone!)

Air con needed re-gassing at a cost of £100 (ouch!)

Other than those little faults, nothing else has gone wrong... yet.

I wonder how well the engines in these Punto sporting will age because they are incredibly low geared. In 5th gear at motorway speeds, the rev counter rarely drops below 4000rpm, the engine must be very stressed! I expect this is why the mk2 Punto sporting has a 6 speed gear box! Mine has covered almost 50k miles however, and is still as smooth as the day I bought it.

The car is great fun to drive though; it pulls very strongly through all the gears and can keep up with the pace on the motorway too!

Handling was a bit sloppy at times, but I have invested in stiffer springs which have improved the situation enormously!

Also, very well equipped - fiat did a deal where you could lose the sun roof and get air con for a pound, so there is quite a few 'cool' sporting's about...