The most drastic incident happened last week - when out of the blue, the engine fell off the mounts writing the car off (at only 80,000 miles). The only upside was I was only travelling at 15mph at the time, had it been on a dual carriageway/motorway it would have probably been fatal.
Before its death, it had other problems - the window wiper motor ceased up twice (£95 + vat for a new one).
ECU had been playing up for a while, causing the car to overrev for no reason - Fiat could find nothing wrong and never solved the problem, despite 2 visits to a main dealer.
Head gasket went at 60k, clutch about 55k, front pads at 30k.
When it was working it was great, cheap to run.
For the first 2-years it ran like clockwork, however then it was one thing after another. Hindsight is a brilliant thing, and with it, as soon as it started playing up, I'd look to change.
I'm still in shock about the engine - I've never heard that happening to another car, especially cars of a similar age and mileage.
I don't think you can make a complaint about changing brake pads at 30k. Most of the many cars I have owned would average about 30k for a set of brake pads.
I've had nine cars, never had to replace the brake pads before 60000 km.
I know a quite similar Punto case, where the oil sump fell off at 110000 km because of the rust.
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