The Fiat Panda is a city car manufactured and marketed by Fiat. The first generation Panda, introduced in 1980, was a two-box, three-door hatchback designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani of Italdesign and was manufactured through 2003, with an all-wheel drive variant in 1983. SEAT of Spain marketed a variation of the first generation Panda under license to Fiat, initially as the Panda and subsequently as the Marbella (1986–1998).
The second-generation Panda, launched in 2003 as a 5-door hatchback, was designed by Giuliano Biasio of Bertone, and won the European Car of the Year in 2004. The third-generation Panda debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2011, was designed at Fiat Centro Stilo under the direction of Roberto Giolito and remains in production in Italy at Pomigliano d'Arco. The fourth-generation Panda is marketed as the Grande Panda, to differentiate it from the third generation that is sold alongside it. Developed under Stellantis, the Grande Panda is produced in Serbia.
In 40 years, Panda production has reached over 7.8 million, of those, approximately 4.5 million were the first generation. Inearly 2020, its 23-year production was counted as the twenty-ninth most long-lived single generation car in history by Autocar. During its initial design phase, Italdesign referred to the car as il Zero. Fiat later proposed the name Rustica. Ultimately, the Panda was named after Empanda, the Roman goddess and patroness of travelers.
First generation (1980)
Introduced at the March 1980 Geneva Motor Show, the Panda was internally designated as Type 141 and was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani of the newly formed Italdesign. From its inception, the Panda was designed as an inexpensive, easily maintained, utilitarian, and robustly simple car. Introduced to the press in December 1979; the first generation went on sale in Italy in late February, ahead of its Geneva première. Fiat launched right-hand drive models for the UK market in May 1981.
Development As the first time Fiat had entrusted the development of a high-volume model to an outside company, Giugiaro and Mantovani spent 15 days in the summer of 1976 in Porto Cervo, Sardinia designing the Panda, using the working name Zero. Giugiaro developed the packaging and styling; Mantovani conceived the car's technical approach.
Fiat CEO Carlo De Benedetti's design brief specified a straightforward 'container' with a spacious and spartan interior, weighing and costing no more than the Fiat 126 it was replacing, and having a similar design approach as the Citroën 2CV or Renault 4. In the late 1950s, the head of Renault, Pierre Dreyfus, had called for the Renault R4 to have an egalitarian approach, like blue jeans, "which people can wear in any situation if you do away with the pretension of snobbism and social conformity".
During the design gestation, Giugiaro took particular inspiration from a folding lounge chair in conceiving the seats of the Zero; simple, easy to maintain, modular, inexpensive to manufacture. To ensure its practicality, he conceived that the Panda's cargo area should accommodate no less than two 50-liter wine demijohns, along with a full complement of passengers. From its inception, the project would use monocoque construction with a nearly flat floor and a sufficiently high roof to accommodate upright seating.
Giugiaro and Mantovani completed the design for its 7 August deadline, discovering only then that De Benedetti had left Fiat.
Despite De Benedetti's departure, Italdesign presented Fiat with two full-scale models, four alternative side designs, an interior buck or mockup and a comprehensive study of the Panda's competition, as well as a series of tempera renderings by Giugiaro. Under the prototyping designation Progetto 141, Fiat subsequently commissioned Italdesign to create production studies, a master model, provisional tooling and pre-production prototypes. Within a year, Italdesign had made 20 rolling chassis.
In February 1978, Fiat test-marketed prototypes to potential customers and dealers at an unpublicized event in Milan's Novegro Park. On response cards distributed by Fiat's sales department, participants evaluated the design's exterior and interior appearance and finish, spaciousness, instruments and controls, engine size, price, and its provisional name: Rustica.
In January 1979, production was delayed by protracted union negotiations, specifically over Fiat's plans to move production from plants in Cassino, Sulmona and Termini Imerese to Turin and Desio. An agreement was reached between December 1979 and January 1980, with production scheduled for the Termini Imerese Autobianchi di Desio plants.
On 26 February 1980 Fiat presented production models to President Sandro Pertini, in the gardens of Rome's Quirinal Palace, and the car officially debuted in Geneva on 5 March carrying the name Panda, after Empanda, the Roman goddess and patroness of travelers. At the time of its introduction, the World Wildlife Fund had resisted Fiat's using the Panda name, but acquiesced when Fiat made a substantial financial contribution. As local custom allowed the writing of a check on any surface, Fiat delivered the contribution, written on the hood of an actual Panda.
In the two months following the Geneva Motor Show, Fiat received over 70,000 orders.
Design
Following the brief of creating a straightforward, practical design in the vein of the Citroën 2CV and the Renault 4, Italdesign's work highlighted utilitarian practicality throughout the design. Just prior to the Panda's debut at the 1980 Geneva Salon de l'Auto, Giugiaro described his design intent in a 1980 interview with Turinese newspaper La Stampa, published in February 1980:
One of the more noted design features was a highly flexible interior including a seven-position adjustable rear seat that could, via a series of adjustable lateral tubes, fold flat into a provisional bed, fold into a V shape to support awkward loads, or easily and quickly be removed altogether to increase the overall load space. Foregoing sprung upholstery, simple padded fabric seat covers, and fabric door trim could be removed and washed. Likewise, the dashboard used a padded, washable fabric supported by a simple tube, creating a long, flexible storage pocket, accompanied by rigid plastic door storage pockets. A simple ashtray could slide along the support tube or be detached completely.
Cargo volume could accommodate 280 litres within the trunk area or could expand to 1000 litres with the rear seat removed in either case unencumbered by the spare wheel, which was stored in the engine compartment. Exposed painted sheet metal comprised much of the interior's exposed surfaces. The interior rear-view mirror had no day/night adjustment, and fresh air ventilation was oriented solely for demisting the windshield. The instrument cluster did contain an upper heating vent. Without fresh air venting to the interior via dash outlets, side windows featured vent windows and optional pop-out rear windows.
Luigi Maglione, Fiat's marketing strategist, was perplexed when first seeing the interior design, suggesting the interior mock-up was missing. Fiat's new CEO, Nicola Tufarelli clarified that the rustic interiors were in fact the final design, ready for launch.
With an overall aerodynamic coefficient lower than the Fiat 127's, in spite of the blocky shape, the first Pandas featured a recess in the adjacent bodywork rather than door handles. It has completely flat glass in all windows, which reduced weight and made them inexpensive to manufacture, as well as easy to replace and interchangeable left to right. Fiat, in fact, had difficulty finding a manufacturer for the highly simplified glass. The engine bay was designed to accept either a transverse or longitudinal engine configuration: in practice, the simple sheet metal, body-colored, asymmetrical grille was positioned either with its intake on the left for the air-cooled Panda 30 and, turned "upside-down", on the right for the water-cooled Panda 45.
The bodyside panels were continuously welded to the roof panel and covered with a full-length black moulding eliminating an expensive sheet metal fold, self-forming a rain gutter, and improving aerodynamics. Owing to the car's flat sides, the lower section of the doors were corrugated to give them additional strength and to resist "drumming". Much like earlier French counterparts, the Panda could be specified with a two-piece roll forward canvas roof. A scratch-resistant paint on the lowest portion of the side panels complemented resin, dent-resistant bumpers. In 2019, an example of the Panda 30 belonging to the FCA Heritage collection was exhibited at the Triennale di Milano.
Launch model (1980) Mechanically the first Pandas shared engines and transmissions with the Fiat 127 and, in certain territories, the air-cooled 652 cc two-cylinder powerplant of the Fiat 126. Rear suspension used a solid axle suspended on leaf springs. Later versions added mechanical improvements while retaining a robust simplicity throughout its model life.
Launch models included the Panda 30, powered by a longitudinally-mounted air cooled 652 cc straight-two-cylinder engine derived from the 126, and the Panda 45, with a transversely-mounted water cooled 903 cc (FIAT 100 series) four-cylinder from the 127. In September 1982, Fiat added another engine to the line-up: the Panda 34 used an 843 cc water-cooled unit, derived from that in the 850. It was originally reserved for export to France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Fiat launched the Panda 45 Super at the Paris Motor Show later in 1982, with previous specification models continuing as the "Comfort" trim. The Super offered an optional five-speed gearbox. Minor styling changes to the Super included Fiat's revised corporate grille with five diagonal silver bars. The earlier grille design (metal with slots on one side) continued on the Comfort models until the next major revision of the line-up. A 30 Super was added in February 1983, offering the Super trim combined with the smaller engine.
The Panda 4x4 was launched in June 1983, powered by a 965 cc engine with derived from the Autobianchi A112 or Fiat 100 series engine. Known simply as the Panda 4x4, this model was the first small, transverse-engined production car to have a 4WD system. The system itself was manually selectable, with an ultra-low first gear. Under normal (on-road) conditions starting was from second, with the fifth gear having the same ratio as fourth in the normal Panda. Austrian company Steyr-Puch supplied the entire drivetrain (clutch, gearbox, power take-off, three-piece prop shaft, rear live axle including differential and brakes) to the plant at Termini Imerese where it was fitted to the reinforced bodyshell. In November 1984 trim levels were named "L", "CL", and "S". Specifications and detailing were modified across the range, using the Fiat corporate grille on all trims. Mechanically the range remained largely unchanged.
First facelift (141a; 1986) In January 1986, the Panda received a thorough revision with visual, mechanical and chassis changes, with the majority of parts being incompatible between the models. The facelift version was internally designated 141A.