Road Test: Volkswagen Up 1.0 75bhp High Up 3dr

Price as tested: €13,265

+ Styling, front seat comfort and space, equipment, economy
– Ride a touch firm, awkward rear seat entry, tiny boot
= Up, up and hooray


Sometimes the old schedule just works out nicely, and this week, instead of my usual book-a-convertible-for-the-dead-of-November I actually managed to book both the new Fiat Panda and the new Volkswagen Up to test drive within a few days of each other. So, while this is not strictly a twin-test, it will be almost impossible to review the Up without reference to the Panda, so close are they as rivals.

The first and most significant thing to note about the Up is its almost staggeringly low price. Here is a car with a pukka Volkswagen badge (a large and prominent one too) on its nose that you can get on your driveway for under €11k. €10,995 is the starting price, for the most basic Take Up model, which will be pretty basic, but even going for the specced-up High Up as tested here, you’re still going to be spending significantly less than €14k.

And there is a lot of spec. As standard, a High Up comes with 15” alloys, air conditioning, heated seats, ESP, City Emergency (which, Volvo-like, slams on the anchors if it detects an incoming collision at low speeds), leather steering wheel and gearshifter, front fogs and an ‘easy entry’ function for flipping the driver’s seat forward.

Our test car, in addition to all that, had the optional Maps & More sat-nav and infotainment system, controlled by a neat little removable touch screen, which only added a very reasonable €370 to the price tag.

So, from within, the Up really doesn’t feel like a diminutive city car at all, at least not in this specification. The broad fascia, with its big sweep of body colour, the surprisingly low-set , comfy seats and the panoramic view out of the windscreen all combine to make it feel bigger and more grown up than you might have expected.

From the outside, it looks tiny though; almost as broad as it is long and styled in a very easy-on-the-eye Mies-Van-Der-Rohe style; all rigorous subjugation of form to function’s control.
However, there are some issues, statically speaking. Space in the back seats is reasonable. If you’ve got small kids, they’ll fit fine but the front seat occupants may have to budge up a bit to allow space for bulky child car seats. Getting in the back is a bit of a faff, though. As mentioned, our car came with the (optional) Easy Entry system that’s supposed to return the seat back to its original position once you’ve flipped it forward to let someone in or out of the back. But it doesn’t work, or at least, not very well and the position and motion of the lever that flips the seat means it’s impossible to do one-handed. OK, such problems will be irrelevant once the five-door Up arrives in the summer, but it’s a pain for now. While we’re at it, the boot is just too small. Officially, it’s 251-litres, which is quite decent but it’s very narrow and certainly won’t take a kid’s buggy. The boot in the Panda is much better shaped and more useful.

On the road, though, the Up begins to claw back serious ground. With a wheel at each corner, you would expect the handling to be go-kart-like, in the vein of the original Mini. The fact that this is not the case (at least not yet) is a mild disappointment, but the Up’s refinement, comfort and generally very useful performance more than compensate.

The dinky little 999cc three-cylinder engine thrums with typical off-beat three-pot gurgles when you rev it, but once up to a cruising speed it’s actually very quiet. Around town, the gearing is ideally set so that when pootling along at 50kmh, you’re actually up into fifth gear, saving a dramatic amount of fuel. Although the lack of stop-start is a bit of a surprise, the Up doesn’t actually seem to need it. We managed a very impressive 5.4-litres per 100km average (that’s better than 50mpg, and looks good against VW’s official claimed figure of 4.7l/100km, 60mpg) and squeezed more than 500km out of it before the refueling light came on. That easily beats our 7.4l/100km average in the 1.2 Panda.

With such town-friendly gearing, you’d expect the Up to be a desperate chore on the motorway, but it’s not. That broad track makes it feel very stable and surefooted, it doesn’t get bounced around by side-draughts much and there’s just enough torque in the engine to keep it on the boil when mixing with other fast moving traffic. The low-set seats (unfashionable for a space-efficient city car) make a long journey much more comfy than in high-set rivals like the Panda, too.

Dynamically, it’s well sorted but a bit vanilla. It goes, stops and steers just as it should, with lovely steering weight and feel, but not much enthusiasm for being hustled. The more hyperactive Panda is more fun to drive, but oddly, it also rides better than the Up. Maybe it’s the short dimensions but the Up felt a bit too firmly sprung for our tastes, certainly for a car that’s destined to mostly be soaking up cracked and broken city streets and speed ramps.

In the end, the Up is exactly what you think it is; a Volkswagen that;s been shrunk down to city car size. It has similar quality, refinement and comfort to its bigger brothers (although it won’t take much looking around the cabin to spot where VW’s been cutting the cost corners), is remarkably frugal (another Volkswagen trait) and looks utterly brilliant, especially in the bright red of our test car. The fiddly seat mechanism will be nulled by the arrival of the five door, but the boot does remain awkwardly small.

Overall, we just (juuuuust) prefer the new Fiat Panda, thanks to its more practical boot and sharper chassis, but the Up’s combination of VW-badge desirability, remarkable economy and tempting price means it’s hard to see them doing anything other than flying out of showrooms.


See the Up’s City Emergency Braking in Action:
















Facts & Figures

Volkswagen High Up 1.0 75bhp
Price as tested: €13,265
Range price: €10,995 to €13,265
Capacity: 999cc
Power: 75bhp
Torque: 95Nm
Top speed: 171kmh
0-100kmh: 13.2sec
Economy: 4.7-100km (60.1mpg)
CO2 emissions: 108g/km
Tax Band: A. €160 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-stars; 89% adult, 80% child, 46% pedestrian, 86% safety assist

Road Test: Fiat Panda 1.2 Easy

Price as tested: €12,995

+ Funky, spacious interior, bigger boot, ride and handling
– Economy could be better, styling looks a touch bulbous
= Fiat’s small car now feels big, but in a good way

2012 is very definitely going to be the year of the small. Whatever the Mayans might have in for us, however much The Hunger Games tries to takeover and no matter what you may have heard about some tournament in Poland where overpaid future pub landlords kick an inflated pig’s bladder about, 2012 is the year of the small car.

Two of the most significant cars to be launched this year are both tiny, both cost around the €11,000 mark yet have the style and sophistication of much bigger vehicles and both are critical to the future of their makers.

The other one is the Volkswagen Up!, which we’ll be testing next week but first up is the new Fiat Panda, the replacement for Fiat’s much-loved tiddler which was launched way back in 2003.
Yet for a car that was knocking on for a full decade in production, the outgoing Panda was still feeling and looking rather fresh and rather lovely, a fact that makes the task before its replacement that much harder. Not only will that be to keep happy Panda buyers in the fold, entice new customers to the Fiat and Panda badges and generally be well received, reviewed and retailed, but like its progenitor, it has to shore up Fiat’s delicate finances. True, those finances are vastly more robust than they were when the 2003 Panda was launched, but nonetheless, this is a crucial new model for a car company that needs a big hit right now.

So you can forgive Fiat for playing it slightly safe with the exterior styling. While all the panels and the detailing is new, there is much here that is familiar from the old Panda. The three-window side view, the slightly boxy, unapologetically upright shape. It is less utilitarian than before, less overtly square, but while the front end (with a face that looks very similar to what’s coming on the new 500L MPV) looks nice and cute, around the back it looks a little puffed-up and botoxed.

Inside though, the news is all good. Fiat has attempted to coin a new word, the Squircle, to describe the squared-off circle motif (or is it a rounded square?) that dominates the interior design. From the main dials to the switchgear to the steering wheel centre to pretty much everything on view, all is squircled up to the max. It could have been irritating, but thanks to a rather funky, slightly seventies retro vibe, some solid build quality and some inherently sensible layout ideas, it all works. The seats, which once again are a touch perched up, are nonetheless comfy and there’s more elbow room than before, thanks to the Panda being slightly larger in every dimension than before. There’s useful oddment storage pretty much everywhere your hands fall, and there’s new-found room in the back seats, proper adult room., thanks to a longer 2,300mm wheelbase. Behind that, there’s now a decent boot, sized between 225 and 260-litres, depending on which version you buy.

And that extra space is significant. It moves the Panda ever so slightly above most of the competition, into the realms of the small family car, as opposed to the small urban runabout. I’m not saying it’s now wildly spacious, but a family of two adults and two kids will fit, with a little bit of squishing, and there’s still space in the boot for a decent sized trip to Tesco’s.

That sense of greater space and usability is reflected in the way the Panda drives. Now, that’s not to say that it feels all growed up, at least not in the sense that it’s still fun to chuck around and still revs eagerly like a small, enthusiastic Italian car should, but there is palpably better refinement on long motorway runs. Sidedrafts and the turbulent air around fast-moving lorries now bothers the Panda not a jot, yet it hasn’t lost its feeling of verve and agility around town. It still slices into and through urban gaps that would stymie a larger car and parking in typically restrictive and tight city multi-stories is a joy, not a chore.

Surprisingly, the 1.2-litre petrol engine, well, surprised us. We had been assuming that the motor of choice would be either the 875ccc turbo TwinAir (noisy but gutsy and bursting with character) or the much-admired (but quite expensive) 1.3 MultiJet diesel. The 1.2 FIRE (Fully Integrated Robotised Engine) can trace its roots all the way back to 1985, yet it is feeling better than ever in the new Panda. 69bhp and 102Nm of torque don’t sound like much, and a 14.2sec 0-100kmh time sounds positively tardy, but on the road, the 1.2 pushes the Panda along with decent conviction, good refinement and not-bad economy. We say not-bad, because an average of 7.2-litres per 100km on our test is just that; neither good nor bad, just about acceptable, even if well short of Fiat’s claimed 5.2-litres per 100km. In the Panda’s defence, much of our test mileage was motorway based, and had we kept to main roads and urban driving (even with the surprising absence of stop-start) it’s likely the economy figure would have been much better. The Co2 figure of 120g/km is just fine though, and keeps you in the lowest €160 tax band.

Prices for the Panda are similarly low. €11,995 gets you the basic Pop 1.2, while our mildly specced-up Easy would set you back €12,995. More expensive are the TwinAir and MultiJet models, but given that the 1.2 is so good, you might be able to safely ignore these. That basic price does make it more expensive than the cheapest new VW Up! but then the Up! is just a three-door for the moment.

It is just about impossible not to like the Panda. It carries with it a sense of charm and fun that has been almost eradicated from larger, more expensive cars. It’s enjoyable to drive, reasonably spacious and practical and, given that the touchy-feely quality was right on the money, seems impressively well built too. Make no mistake, in the year of the small, this one’s a biggie.

Facts & Figures

Fiat Panda 1.2 Easy
Price: €12,995
Range price: €11,995 to €15,545
Capacity: 1,242cc
Power: 69bhp
Torque: 102Nm
Top speed: 164kmh
0-100kmh: 14.2sec
Economy: 5.2-100km (54.3mpg)
CO2 emissions: 120g/km
Tax Band: A. €160 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 4-stars; 82% adult, 63% child, 49% pedestrian, 43% safety assist

Road Test: Kia Picanto 1.0 EX

Price as tested: €12,595.

In brief: Kia ups the quality, safety and equipment bar with the new Picanto. Good looking and sweet to drive too.


Seven years doesn’t seem like an especially long time, yet it has become a virtual cliché to point out just how far Kia has come in that span of years. Why seven? Why not a decade? Simple, because it was seven years ago that the first generation Picanto was launched and we all got an inkling that Kia could actually make a decent car.

That first Picanto was hardly earth-shattering, but it was a shining beacon in amongst the low-cost dreck that Kia was peddling at the time. It had a pleasant, nicely-appointed cabin, a sweet-revving little 1.0-litre engine and a chassis that actually seemed to enjoy being chucked about. As a city nipper, it was nigh-on perfect and when Kia’s seven-year warranty kicked in, buying one became something of a no-brainer.

So, what of the 2011 Picanto? Can it stand out in amongst the horde of very decent (and occasionally outstanding) Kias that now populate the Korean maker’s range?

Well, the simple fact is that it can’t possibly stand out like the original simply because  Kia no longer makes dreck, and in the shape of the Cee’d and Sportage makes some genuinely excellent cars.

Still, stylistically, Kia (under the guidance of design director Peter Schreyer) has done much to make the new Picanto stand out in a given motoring crowd. Quite apart from the, ahem, ‘jaunty’ colour options (powder blue and banana yellow among them), the Picanto looks much more chiseled and handsome than before. The cats-bum grille of old has gone, replaced by a jutting Thunderbirds puppet jaw of a front bumper, that distinctive ‘Tiger Mouth’ grille and a sense of being well proportioned and balanced – not always a given on a tall, narrow city car.

Inside, there is a surprising amount of room, especially in the back where six footers can at the very least squeeze in for short hops without complaint. Up front, the fascia and instruments look and feel of the highest quality, while the two-spoke steering wheel with its funky faux-aluminium inserts, feels just right in your palms.

The 200-litre boot is a bit on the small side though. It’ll just about take a decent shopping trip, but kids buggies and bigger bags are going to be a squeeze at best, and possibly not possible.

We’ve become used to Kia offering better than decent standard equipment lists, but the Picanto really takes the biscuit. OK, so the basic LX mdoel’s entry price of €11,495 may look a touch high compared to some versions of the Fiat Panda or Nissan Pixo, but then the Picanto comes stuffed to the gills with spec, including side and curtain airbags, ESP, remote central locking and a trip computer.

Upgrade to the €12,595 EX model we tested and it feels practically Rolls-Royce-esque by city car standards. Air conditioning, iPod connection, all-round electric windows, electric folding wing mirrors and a Bluetooth phone hook-up. Crikey.

All of which would be worth three fifths of damn all if the Picanto felt cheap or was nasty to drive, but it just isn’t.

OK, so with 69bhp from 998cc, the little three-pot engine isn’t going to win any rice pudding skin pulling contests, but it rasps and whirrs away happily to itself and as long as you stir the five speed gearbox regularly (which moves with a positive, chunky feeling across its gate) then you won’t be left feeling too sluggish. Extra weight (especially in the form of well-fed motoring journalists) blunts performance noticably, but that’s the price you pay for 99g/km Co2 emissions (which should keep the Picanto in the lowest tax band whatever budgetary changes Obergruppenfurher Noonan has planned) and claimed 4.2-litres per 100km fuel economy. That economy will take a serious hit if you stretch the Picanto’s legs too much or too often on the motorway, but keep it around town (why no stop-start, incidentally?) and you should be able to get close to that kind of figure.

And while it’s no Lotus, the littlest Kia certainly doesn’t disgrace itself in the handling stakes. The steering is well weighted and communicative, while front end grip feels especially sticky and well sorted. It flicks and turns with agility and the sensation that you’ll be able to take advantage of pretty much any gap that opens up in traffic, but the tall roof and titchy length mean that the ride quality isn’t what it could be; big bumps are well and truly felt and shorter, sharper shocks aren’t sufficiently well ironed out. Good, but not great in that department.

It’s actually kind of hard to tell how good the Picanto is. Certainly, it’s at least as good as our class favourite, the Fiat Panda, and way ahead of Ford’s awful Ka. It’s also better looking, better equipped and more economical than its cousin, the Hyundai i10, which is also slightly more expensive. And it feels much more modern (as it should) than the likes of the Toyota Aygo or Peugeot 107. So it’s good then, very good indeed.

But is it just us, or does that fact that the rest of the Kia range is now also every bit as good somehow take the shine off the Picanto’s excellence? Suddenly, we’ve become used to Kia giving us terrific cars. The fact that the Picanto lives precisely up to that expectation is the best form of faint praise we can think of.

Facts & Figures

Kia Picanto 1.0 EX
Price: €12,595
Price range: €11,495 to €12,595
Capacity: 998cc
Power: 69bhp
Torque: 95Nm
Top speed: 153kmh
0-100kmh: 14.4sec
Economy: 4.2l-100km (65mpg)
CO2 emissions: 99g/km
Road Tax Band: A €104
Euro NCAP rating: Not yet tested