Panda update

[Pat Pending]

In the early 1970s when I was at school a friend's mother had a Fiat 500. She was a big woman and several of us would pile into her car for a lift home. How it got up Highgate West Hill under that load I know not. I think the elastic bands had to be would up a bit tighter than usual:)

I'm sure Jeffrey remembers Les Johns who wrote for "Television" magazine often recounting stories of his customers antics. One such occasion was the chap who was a tree surgeon who quoted a customer for removing a large overhanging bough from a roadside tree that was on his property. The cost was too high for the man so he elected to do it himself by roping the offending bough over a higher branch then down to the bumper of his wife's Fiat 500. The happless fool sawed off the bough and up in the air went the Fiat. Les recounted in the magazine that the car was a Mini but as I was a near neighbour to the DIY woodsman at the time, (I then lived in Bluebellhill, Kent), I can attest it was a Fiat, and the cars bumper didn't come away from the bodywork, and when they got the car down it hadn't suffered to badly from the ordeal.

In the early eighties I bought a 1976 Fiat 127 sport when the old car that I had, failed its MOT miserably, despite being ridiculed by the "bar room experts" the car gave not one ounce of trouble, eventually being written off by a dust cart that was being reversed around a corner when it was 14 years old.

Later, I have exclusively had Skoda cars, that have given good service, but I still get the "jokes", in fact daily from a colleague who's "fantastic" Vauxhall recently spontaneously combusted in his driveway. Car buying has always been pot luck to an extent, so you pay's your money and make your choice.

Andy