It’s a giant Panda! New Fiat SUV and Fastback to boost brand’s line-up
Auto Express exclusively talks to Europe boss and design chief on how its concepts are speeding to production
A chunky SUV and cool ‘Fastback’ crossover are on the launchpad, as Fiat’s new model blitz intensifies.
The big one – literally, by Fiat’s compact standards – is an SUV nicknamed GigaPanda. A sister car to the 4.4m-long Citroen C3 Aircross, the SUV is likely to offer both five- and seven-seat configurations.
Launching first, however, is Fiat’s Fastback. It will fill the gap left by the Tipo, fleetingly sold in the UK as a budget hatchback to challenge the Ford Focus. But the saloon variant is the big ticket item for Fiat: badged as Egea, it’s a strong seller in Algeria and Turkey, where it’s also assembled. There’s also a coupé-SUV called the Fastback in Brazil. The new model is charged with replacing all these Fiats in one fell swoop – and the UK team is looking into bringing it here.
“Two new cars are coming that will complete Fiat’s resurgence,” head of Europe Gaetano Thorel exclusively told Auto Express at the brand’s Centro Stile design centre. And they’ll both be unveiled in the next 12 months, with the Fastback set for a debut before the end of 2025.
The cars will underpin Fiat’s bid to transform from local player to global force. The once-mighty small car brand has become a minnow in the UK, with the baby Panda no longer manufactured in right-hand drive and only the 500e city car and 600 mild hybrid and electric SUV in showrooms, alongside their sporty Abarth offshoots.
Reinforcements are on the way – Fiat engineers have overhauled the 500’s electric platform to accommodate a lightly electrified petrol engine and the show-stopping Grande Panda will land in the UK in September. “Our dealers have had to cross the desert!” continued the colourful Thorel. “But now they know the desert is over.”
The Grande Panda’s retromodernist design will dictate the look of the new GigaPanda and Fastback, as previewed by a series of 2024 concept cars demonstrating its versatility.
“When we developed Grande Panda we [created] a series of vehicles in a kind of ‘Lego’ system, where we’ll build different vehicles in different sizes that actually use a lot of common components to really reduce their cost,” Fiat head of design François Leboine told Auto Express at the Centro Stile.
The Grande Panda’s silhouette, front and rear lamp outlines, blocky, rectangular panels and Panda script capture the spirit of the eighties original, while the short overhangs, complex light patterns and vibrant colours bring modernity. Throw in the design team’s cheesy but instructive buzzphrases – to make cars ‘practicool’ and put the fun into functionality – and you have the recipe shaping the GigaPanda and Fastback.
The latter has an angular tail crowned with a diagonally slanted rear screen that mimics the windscreen’s rake, a key relationship in the Grande Panda’s design too, according to Leboine. Overall the Fastback’s form resembles the Polestar 2’s, a high-riding notchback.
The smart money is on Turkish saloon-fans being disappointed as the Agea morphs into a crossover with a tailgate – but delivers more global appeal. “Today Egea is a saloon. But I think you can have the consumer evolve,” hinted Thorel.
Under the skin, the new Fiats will use the Stellantis group’s low-cost architecture, introduced on the Citroen C3 and underpinning the Grande Panda. “We will use the ‘smart car’ platform to propose and produce new vehicles that will be targeting different regions in the world and different customers, sometimes replacing [existing] products or even coming with new products,” said Leboine.
That means smart car’s full mix of powertrains and EV batteries are on the shelf for the future Fiat family.
Citroen is introducing a range-topping 54kWh battery for the C3 Aircross, set to extend the range to around 250 miles. It’ll sit alongside the 44kWh pack, good for 188 miles. Expect the GigaPanda to offer both batteries and muster similar ranges.
“We called it GigaPanda to let people understand it’s much bigger than Grande Panda, though they’re rooted in the same design,” said the 57-year-old European boss. “Fiat’s playground is urban mobility. That to me means from 2.5 metres [the Topolino version of the Citroen Ami] to four-point-something metres.”
Fiat previewed the GigaPanda concept with a striking purple SUV, again with blocky sections, pixel lights and body detailing inspired by the old Lingotto factory’s rows of square windows. The long wheelbase frees up space for larger families, though the kicked up windowline will need extending – perhaps in keeping with the blue Panda Camper XXL concept’s sideglass – to give third row passengers a view out.
“I cannot say we’ll do it [exactly] like this,” Leboine told Auto Express in Turin. “But we’ve worked on this vehicle family and they are ready. The [Grande] Panda [concept] was a bit exaggerated but all the cues were there. That’s more or less what will happen [with GigaPanda].”
Fiat has learned its lesson from only offering the 500 as a pure EV. So the mild hybrid 1.2-litre turbo petrol will be fitted, along with a pure petrol (as well as ethanol options, a popular fuel in Brazil).
The two cars should be on the market by the end of 2026, with a pick-up set to join the following year. That will replace the Brazilian Strada and also be offered in more markets, including Europe.
“We have a responsibility to get Fiat back to where it belongs in Europe,” said Thorel. “We want to be a protagonist, which means having a market coverage of at least 50 per cent.”
And what is Fiat’s market coverage today, we asked? “Without Grande Panda? I can’t tell you, because otherwise you’d ask: ‘How have you survived?’!”
Did you know you can sell your car through Auto Express? We’ll help you get a great price and find a great deal on a new car, too.
