I had a lovely sky blue Fiat Punto as my first ever car, and for that reason I will always have a soft spot in my heart for it. Unfortunately, my time in ownership of this outwardly attractive car did turn somewhat into a catalogue of errors! In fact, I think both the AA and my local garage got sick of the sight of me.

I bought the 02 reg Punto at the end of 2006, so it was a few years old by then. When I bought it things went well for a while, the car has good petrol consumption and good handling, and is externally nice to look at. The interior is a little bit "plasticky" but I think that is pretty much typical of most cars of its age. The doors did seem quite thin and tinny though, and I'm not sure how well off the occupants would be should the car get into a bump on the roads.

In the time that I had the car, my windscreen wipers broke twice (in the rain and the dark on the motorway!), the sump corroded and needed replacing (which according to the garage is typical of the Punto's of that age because of the material the sump was made from), my door locks failed and I got a mysterious electrical gremlin.... The gremlin would randomly cause warning lights to flash up on the dashboard, ranging from the steering wheel light to the oil light; these lights would normally disappear as quickly as they came but not before they had totally unnerved you! Sometimes the car would cut out totally after a warning light had just flashed on, and would refuse to respond for anywhere between half an hour and an hour. After this time though it would go back to behaving as normal! The AA and 2 local mechanics were totally unable to find anything wrong or explain the problem, which was mildly frustrating to say the least.

I could have just been extremely unlucky with this particular Punto, but based on the utter chaos and fear that it brought into my life for 18months, I wouldn't risk going there again...