SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

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Trailing lightly: 2017 Fiat Panda 0.9 Cross

Getting serious

Posted 24 September 2017

The numbers
Price: R249 900
Engine: 875 cc, SOHC, eight valve, twin-cylinder, turbopetrol
Power: 66 kW at 5500 rpm
Torque: 145 Nm at 1900 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 12.0 seconds
Maximum speed: 167 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 7.5 l/100 km
Tank: 37 litres
Luggage: 225 – 870 litres
Warranty and service plan: 3 years / 100 000 km
Servicing as per onboard indicator or at least annually
Off road specs:
Ground clearance: 161 mm
Approach/departure/ rampover angles: 24/34/21 degrees

It‘s the little Crossover that can. And does. Fiat took its third-generation Panda, added more body cladding to the lower doors, fitted wheel arch trims and massive looking skid plates, put on a chunkier grill and enclosed the front fog lamps in special nacelles. The roof rails were swapped out for items that you can actually lash stuff to and, should you want them, a pair of cross bars can be ordered optionally. Solid discs replaced rear drum brakes and manually adjustable door mirrors made way for warmed and powered versions.

Then they got serious; adding steel shields to protect engine and fuel tank, lifting the suspension by 11 mm and raising the engine air intake to 711 millimetres – in case you need to ford a river to reach your favourite camping spot.

Helping you get there, Fiat slipped in a sixth gear with lower first ratio for off-road crawling and an electronic coupling from Steyr-Puch. It distributes torque between front and rear axles as demand dictates. Both differentials have brake-controlled electronic locking (ELD) to keep you going when things get tough. That means that when the ESP detects a spinning wheel it transfers power across to its neighbour that still has traction. Higher profiled 185/65 R15 Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons tyres are part of the package.

Should conditions become really harsh, you can lock up the coupling by twisting the three-position (Auto, off-road and off-road+Gravity) selector on the centre console. Off-road locks distribution in at 50:50, front to rear, while for steep downgrades you turn the dial one click further to engage Gravity, or what other manufacturers call hill descent control.

Cross and its Lounge 4x4 sister are (marginally) the least expensive all-wheel drive SUVs available in South Africa today. They invite comparison with Suzuki’s similarly sized “cricket” but although that one’s off-road specs appear more extreme, Fiat states that awd Pandas can tackle 70 percent gradients and 55 percent lateral angles. Their safety kit and other technologies are also more modern.

Panda Cross conquered our fairly severe off-road course without missing a beat, then dealt with the washboard road out past the veggie farms, soaking up vibrations and tracking straight and true. It owes some of its giant-killing capability to light mass and narrow build that enable it to sail over most slushy bits while bypassing other obstacles altogether.

The 875 cc TwinAir turbopetrol engine develops its maximum torque of 145 Nm at 1900 rpm but although it can keep lugging at that speed, it feels much livelier when allowed to breathe deeply and sing along at higher revs. The marshmallow wall of the rev limiter appears at around 6000 rpm.


Beside the already mentioned lower first ratio, upper gears appear to be slightly shorter than those on city Pandas. The Lounge version we drove earlier turned over at about 3200 rpm for 120 km/h in top (fifth) while the Cross’s tacho indicated 3500 in sixth gear at the same speed. That could account for the noticeable difference in real life fuel consumption and lower top speed, although the Cross version also carries a weight penalty of around 115 kg.

While attending the launch a few weeks earlier, we asked why Fiat SA chose to release the Cross SUV with this engine rather than the 1.3-litre Multijet ll diesel available elsewhere. The official reply was that, although the diesel is a popular choice, overseas writers rated the 875 cc TwinAir turbopetrol nicer for day-to-day use. We won’t argue too much because the Multijet engine would almost certainly be heavier, thereby altering the car’s front-to-rear balance and possibly its dynamics, but we can’t help daydreaming…

Test unit from FCASA press fleet

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This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.

Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material.

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