The Twelve Drives of Christmas - 12. A Fiat on the '500

by Ben Coombs January 05, 2019

The day before I boarded a plane to fly to Slovenia and collect the Renault 4 from yesterday's drive, Laura and I found ourselves with a day to kill in the London area. So, what to do with a free Saturday in May? We headed to the Auto Classica show at Brooklands. This is a marvellously extensive gathering of Italian motoring icons staring everything from million-pound Ferraris to the humblest of Fiats. And while we were there, we came across a Fiat Panda for sale. But not just any Fiat Panda - this one had been lowered and re-engine with a Fiat Punto sporting engine, doubling its eagerness to 90hp.

And the best thing about this little black Fiat? It was for sale.

And it wasn't difficult for me to persuade Laura to buy it, before I jetted off to Slovenia to rendez-vous with the Renault.

So, what fate awaited this Fiat Panda? With Pub2Pub on the horizon, the obvious thing to do was to take it on a Pub2Pub adventure in the autumn of 2016. No, not the globetrotting odyssey of TVR fame, but a more modest trip. The southernmost bar in the UK, to the northernmost.

Hello and welcome to the last of the Twelve Drives which have seen us through the festive season. This is the first of our drives which doesn't leave the UK, but as it contains the vintage LEJOG drive, as well as the unparalleled awesome of Scotland's NC500, that's no hardship, and it turns out a tiny overpowered Fiat with an unsilenced exhaust is simply the perfect car for the UK's coolest road trip. Who knew?!

Here's an article describing our Panda drive in more detail:

https://www.autoclassics.com/posts/reviews/fiat-panda-roadtrip-bangernomics

And there are some of the pictures from the trip below.

And don't think that just because we've reached our last big road trip before we set off on the Pub2Pub Expedition, we're done. Well be covering Pub2Pub next, followed by some of the follow-up trips, which you can get involved with. So, stay tuned over the next week because the road trip inspiration is going to just keep on rolling.