lil red cinque! (Fiat Cinquecento)

Member Name: girly_nat

Product:	Fiat Cinquecento
Date:	07/05/04 (1839 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value, fairly reliable, sweet

Disadvantages: Small things failing

I past my test January last year, and all i could moan on about to my parents was 'i want a car, i need a car, everyones got a car except me!!' 'You don't know how annoying it is to be able to drive and not own a car!'
Of course being not much of a saver shall we say, i had no cash to actually by a car, hence my constant complaining.
My parents lent me £800 maximum to get a car, so i had to think hard on what i wanted out of a vechile apart from getting from A to B.
I didn't really know anything about cinquecento's when i found my M reg, basic model. As i was a new driver i wasnt used to anything apart from a corsa, so i didn't find the bite point that easy to find and the pedals were soo close together. But i thought it looked rather sweet, and it had fairly good body work so i bought it.

I got a mechanic friend to give it the once over when i got home, and was very disspointed to find out that it needed £400 worth of work doing to it. The suspension needed re-inforcing because of a rattling on the rear, a new cluth cable, handbrake tightening and a re-conditioned gear box. I was gutted, so i had to lend even more cash off the rents to get it fixed. After that it only failed me once, when the battery went, luckerly at the local Q8 garage. But the battery was cheap to replace so i was lucky.
The car overall was very reliable and you could achieve suprising speeds on the motorway 95 max. A little embarrasing up hills, but it was a superb car for running around town with. I filled it up with £15 a week peterol, and that did me 5 16 mile trips and general running around town.
The interior wasnt too much too be desired, but i got some 6x9 speakers in the back and it made the car in to a right little beat box.

It was a great car, and i had it for just over a year, then sold it for a Rover 214s which im getting next week. The insurance was 705 quid TFT for my first year, then with one years no c
laims it went down to £450 fully comp. I cried when i sold my car and i'll never forget it, we had some right old 'chicki' adventures.
More than Ideal for the smaller budget!

Summary: