Fiat Grande Punto 1.3 Dynamic 90
Three-Door review
by David Finlay (29 June 2006)
The way the diary worked out, the Grande Punto was plunged into rather a tough test within days of its arrival. Nothing dramatic, you understand - no charging round Silverstone, or struggling through the searing heat of the Gobi desert, or dodging polar bears and hoping we would spot the next crevasse before crashing into it.
Instead, the Grande Punto was required to transport two of us to, around and back from the extreme north-east of Aberdeenshire over the course of a weekend. For a small family car, that would prove to be enough of a challenge. If Fiat's latest hatchback was going to annoy us, it would certainly do so over those two days.
And, as things turned out, there was quite a lot to be annoyed about. The one thing about the car which was entirely satisfactory was the engine, that brilliant little 1.3-litre GM/Fiat MultiJet turbo diesel co-production which has been the saving grace of every model it has been fitted to.
It really is a fabulous unit. Considering its size, it performs very stoutly, and I never felt I had been shortchanged by being offered this model rather than one of the ones using the much larger 1.9-litre JTM diesels. They are good too, but they don't come close to the 1.3's combined fuel economy of over 60mpg. (These things are important when you're in Aberdeenshire, and indeed if you have an Aberdonian mother.)
In the Grande Punto range as it currently stands, there are four models available with this engine. The one tested here was in Dynamic trim and had three doors, but you can also go for the entry-level Active specification and/or five doors.
The step up from Active to Dynamic costs £1700. For that you get more body-coloured exterior trim, some leather for the interior, alloy rather than steel wheels and air-conditioning with a pollen filter as standard. The Dynamic also has a 60/40 split-folding rear seat along with front, window and side airbags, all of which are available in the Active but only as extra-cost options.
Going for the higher equipment level means breaching the £10,000 barrier (Active and Dynamic three-doors cost £8495 and £10,195 respectively, and there's a £600 premium for the five-door equivalents). This is risky territory for the Grande Punto. The most basic version of all, the petrol-fuelled 1.2 Active, costs just £7594, and that seems to be home ground for the range. Everything else feels like a £7594 car with more kit added, and the further you go from that price the more of a quality shortfall there seems to be.
That was a problem with the test car right from the start, but there are others too. Fiat has allowed some very curious design features to get through to the production stage, and the one that concerns me most - which applies more to the three-door than to the five-door - is the issue of rear visibility.
Superminis are particularly bad for this these days, so Fiat is not alone here. But if you're actually sitting in a Grande Punto when the issue comes to mind - which it does as you tentatively reverse into an area largely obscured by the massive C pillars - Fiat is inevitably the company you tend to blame.
Another piece of Grande Punto unpleasantness, which I admit may be personal to me, is that all the pedals have very long travel, and involve a big change in the geometry of your legs as you press them all the way down. I found it difficult to control an extra surge of acceleration or braking as my knees began to straighten out, and there was a similar problem with clutch smoothness as I changed gear.
Since the Grande Punto was introduced, Fiat has been making big claims about the ride quality, but I found this crashy and uncomfortable at the press launch and have not found any reason to change my opinion since then. Maybe we'll have to disagree about that one.
It is beyond dispute, however, that the cupholders in the centre console are very difficult to use. They are only a few inches under the central section of the dashboard, and you have to angle a drinks can very steeply to be able to fit it in. If the can is open and nearly full, there's a definite risk that you're going to spill your fizz on the carpet.
It did not take long for all of the above to become seriously annoying. By the end of the test, my overall impression of the Dyanmic diesel was that it was an attractive but flawed supermini, only just saved by one of the best engines in the industry.
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