Fiat Vanda 100HP | Shed of the Week
Not a typo, just the answer to a question you never thought to ask
Shed has many vehicles in his possession, or in his yard at least. Technically, most of them belong to the ancient villagers who brought them in for repair work, in some cases several years ago, but in Shed’s view possession is nine-tenths of the law. Unless of course, the law comes a-knocking - in which case he owns nothing.
The only vehicle Shed owns up to actually owning is his Montego van. That’s because it’s a classic, and thus cheap to insure; it’s a van, and therefore cheap to tax; and it’s a Montego, a vehicle once described by What Car? magazine as ‘very decent’.
Shed also likes vans because they carry lots of stuff, such as for example the industrial quantities of potatoes that Mrs Shed sends him out to get on a weekly basis. For these duties, his Montego is actually fine but he does sometimes wish it had a bit more performance.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that he likes this week’s sub-£2,000 offering, a Fiat Vanda 100HP. A what’s that now? Yes, you heard it right, a van conversion of a Panda 100HP, the squirty little sprite that’s long been a staff favourite here at PH Towers. 975kg, 99hp at 6,000rpm, a snappy six-speed gearbox and a well-sorted chassis provide the fun, and with a combined fuel consumption of 43.5mpg to boot.
All the 100HPs that Shed has told you about in the past have been under £1k, so you’ll probably be swallowing hard at the £1,800 being asked here, but used prices have gone up and in this particular hybrid you are getting bagloads of practicality to go with the general hilarity provided by the regular 100HP. You should maybe stick with the S Class if your motoring life is confined to big or broken roads because no Panda or Vanda 100HP will deliver a hushed ride or defend your derriere against Tarmac attack. They’re a bit understeery at trackdays as well, but on the right A and B roads the queue of cars you’ll be holding up in a 100HP will be short indeed.
The drivetrain is tough too, so we needn’t be too concerned about the 146,000 miles this one has done, especially as the owner (a PHer, obvs) has invested plenty of time and money into keeping it right. The honest and informative ad copy will give you more than a couple of smiles so we’ll let you skim through that in your own time to gen up on the details of what he’s done to the Panda, but the key non-van-specific items are a new timing belt, water pump, thermostat, spark plugs and tyres, all within the last 18 months or so, plus a nice Pioneer double-DIN audio unit with sat nav, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in place of the usual weedy Blaupunkt FM radio/MP3 player that was fitted by the factory.
On top of all that it’s got an Abarth steering wheel and seats. His next plan was to bung a turbo 1.4 Tjet engine into it but the arrival into the family of a little ‘un has obliged him to put this little ‘un on the market. The MOT runs up to the end of August and has a couple of advisories for worn axle bushes and a non-excessive oil leak. Other common faults on the standard 100HP are corrosion to the springs, rear axle and exhaust, worn wheel bearings and slightly over-servoed brakes, but here in the van the addition of a suitable payload should balance things up nicely.
The rear bumpstops are famously too long on 100HPs but our Vanda man says he has already replaced these (hopefully with shorter ones from the Fiat Coupe, that’s the recommended fix) and renewed the rear dampers. Dodgy lacquer could blight your 100HP bonnet and the heating system might well only blow cold air. Anyone with average to large feet will struggle to rest their left foot in a 100HP, but a few minutes spent hacking away the plastic on the left of the clutch pedal will miraculously produce a solution.
On the upside, 100HP parts are cheap and so is insurance, relatively speaking anyway, and any trouble that you encounter with the electric power steering system is potentially easily rectified by the insertion of a new battery. In case you were wondering, ‘van’ comes from caravan which comes from the French word caravane, or possibly the Italian word caravana, both of which come from the Persian word karwan or karvan. Who would have thought that Persians had karvans? At least there was plenty of overtaking space in the Persian desert.
I also remember having to run a reconditioned engine in it as well, and only being able to do about what felt like 10mph...what a time to be alive!
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