It might look like it loves the great outdoors but this mild hybrid hatchback is more at home tackling the urban jungle

It is not until you’ve spent many years attempting to hustle something large and obnoxious around busy city streets that the opportunity to jump behind the wheel of a diminutive hatchback suddenly seems quite appealing.

The Fiat Panda, arguably one of the most charming and affordable small cars on sale today, has long impressed with its ability to cram many humans and things inside its tiny shell, while remaining a hilarious thing to drive.

There’s even a proper 4x4 version for those who need the additional grip on the slippery stuff, but the Panda is all about economical motoring. Its boxy shape maximising interior space and its beefed up exterior plastics protecting from the myriad bumps and scrapes often experienced in the tough inner city.

Just like the 500, Fiat has seen fit to reduce its emissions and attempt to improve fuel economy with the addition of a (very) mild hybrid system. And just like the 500, the Panda now packs a 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine and 12v belt-integrated starter generator underneath its tiny bonnet.

Mated to the sort of battery you’d find on a meagre eBike, this belt-integrated starter generator offers a small helping of additional shove, which helps to get the front wheels turning when accelerating away from a standstill, thus saving fuel and reducing emissions.

There’s no opportunity to plug this hybrid into a wall socket, so the small onboard battery relies on regenerative braking to charge, which should give you some indication of just how much additional ‘shove’ the 69bhp system offers. In fact, there’s no real discernible difference between this and its purely petrol-powered siblings.

That doesn’t take anything away from the driving experience, though, because this still feels just like any Panda. It rolls through corners, it has a tendency to understeer and positively challenges the driver to undertake every journey with the throttle pinned to the floor. That might be awful for fuel consumption but the three-cylinder engine sounds so good when it is being utterly abused.

Joking aside, the Panda Hybrid still somehow manages to be a hoot to drive and it comes alive when the roads get congested. The manual gearshift is snappy and its almost square exterior makes parking a complete doddle. The raised ride height makes mincemeat of speed bumps and the excellent visibility all around ensures tight spaces and tricky manoeuvres are tackled with ease. Throw in the additional bash plates and off-road elements of this launch edition Cross model and its as if this Panda was born to be bashed around your local car park.

The Panda Hybrid Cross Launch Edition, to give it its full title, comes with exclusive 15-inch alloy wheels, toughened body work, a special launch edition logo and Dew Green paint. All of those things are fine… apart from the paint. The colour - to these eyes at least - looks like the sort of hue that would grace your grandma’s best skirt. You know, the one she would crack out for Sunday roast at Toby Carvery.

Spec it in any other colour and it is perfectly fine. Atypically Panda, The side profile is blunt, the four corners almost square and the rear so slab sided, you can park it mere millimetres from another bumper and not worry about setting off the reverse parking sensors. Strait-laced and utilitarian in its design approach, this is a car created in a country where the very notion of ‘touch parking’ was first conceived.   

But it still packs bags of character and where the retro charm of the 500 now seems a bit, well, retro, the chunkier Panda still manages to retain an element of rough-around-the-edges chic.

Unfortunately, the Panda’s sparse interior is starting to feel very dated now and there’s no hiding its sub-£15k price tag when it comes to the vast amount of scratchy plastics adorning the dash and doors. 

Infotainment is taken care of by one of the most basic systems known to man, which sees a little phone cradle attached to the top of the dash and a simple Casio calculator-style interface mounted in the centre. This only managed FM radio on the model we tested but does have Bluetooth connectivity for hands free calls and, more importantly, streaming stuff from your smartphone. Yeah, the one that’s now stuck in the cradle that’s blocking most of the view out of the front windscreen. 

Its simplicity means the system is all very user friendly and the buttons that operate the air conditioning and electric windows are comically chunky but it feels very cheap. In fact, whoever signed off the solid plastic headrests for the driver and front passenger should immediately resign and be made to sleep on a mattress made from granite as punishment.

The mild hybrid system under the bonnet of new Panda might not be anything to write home about, but its ability to completely shut off the petrol engine at low speeds (when the driver selects neutral) and assist a little with acceleration have led to improvements in emissions and fuel economy that mean Fiat's 1.2-litre petrol engine is likely not long for this world.

Thankfully, there’s no real impact on performance and this Panda still feels just as fun and characterful to drive. It is surprisingly spacious inside, boasts a really practical and useable boot, it feels tough and is extremely easy to live with - especially in busy cities.

Yes, the interior is still a bit of a letdown but the Panda remains very affordable and it still comes with bags of personality as standard.  

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