Fiat Doblo 1.4-Litre Range Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Fiat Doblo 1.4-litre range
Prices: £10,500-£11,375 – on the road
Insurance Group: 4
Emissions: 174g/km
Performance: 0-60mph 17.0s / Max Speed 92mph
Fuel Consumption: [Urban] 30.7mpg, [extra Urban] 44.8mpg,[combined] 38.2mpg
Safety: Twin airbags / 3-point seatbelts
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height 4159/1714/1800mm

ENTER THE WAGON

Our Rating: 5.0 / 10

The Fiat Doblo has been facelifted and smartened up. Steve Ghosley takes a look at the 1.4-litre entry level petrol model

Fiat’s Doblo is never going to win any prizes in a beauty contest but what it loses on looks it makes up for in practicality and usability. With the previous model you got exactly what you expected – a practical but ugly ducking. Fiat’s latest offering is still no oil painting but the styling changes have produced a vehicle with a certain charm and practicality that we explore here with the 1.4-litre entry-level petrol model.

The rather odd looking front end has been thoroughly revised, Fiat ditching the gratuitously odd-looking horizontal bar that appeared plastered onto the front of the old car for a look that’s more like a compact 4x4. Bigger headlamps and wider underbumper intakes give the Doblo a little presence without looking like it’s been tagged by the ugly stick. The latest changes are likely to put the Fiat onto the shortlists of many buyers who previously rejected it on the grounds that it looked a little unconventional. Prices for the 1.4-litre petrol model we look at here start at around £10,000 and there’s a choice of two trim levels – Active and plusher Dynamic.

The old Doblo, from unpromising beginnings, developed into quite a decent package. It was certainly good enough - from a technical perspective at least - to worry the likes of the Citroën Berlingo Multispace, the Renault Kangoo and the Peugeot Partner Combi, the big players in the van-based MPV sector.

The old 1.2-litre petrol powerplant has felt the weight of Fiat’s axe, being supplanted in this instance by the 77bhp 1.4-litre unit we’re testing here. An extra 12bhp makes a lot of difference when you’re toting a fully loaded Doblo. One of the objectives in the design of this engine was to maximize torque at low speed in order to make urban driving as easy as possible and to minimize fuel consumption. On the combined cycle, the latest Doblo returns a healthy 38.2mpg and flat out it will reach a heady top speed of 92mph. The 0-60mph sprint is a little irrelevant for a vehicle of this class but for the record, it takes a leisurely 17.0 seconds. Certainly fast enough when transporting such a precious cargo as your nearest and dearest. The 1.4-litre petrol engine is fully EURO4 compliant and discharges only 174g/km of CO2.

What will be of more relevance to prospective purchasers is the cavernous load bay. That rudimentary rear suspension comes into its own here, as it allows for a near perfectly flat floor, and the almost vertical sides of the Doblo help to create a 750-litre load space with the seats in place and a gargantuan 3,000 litres with the seats folded.

The interior styling of this car has always been more conservative than that of the exterior and the latest revisions have brought things further up to date, successfully masking the Doblo’s commercial vehicle origins. There’s a two-tone dash and by excising body-coloured metal from the doors, Fiat have upped the perceived quality factor a tad. Standard equipment is generous, with base Active trim including electric front windows, remote central locking, twin airbags, ‘follow me home’ lights, a height-adjustable steering wheel, power assisted steering, ABS brakes with EBD, a radio/cassette player, a split folding rear seat, three rear seatbelts and head restraints all round. The Dynamic adds body-coloured bumpers, fog lights, a radio/CD player, air-conditioning, a CD player and 15-inch alloy wheels.

To get a perspective of where the Doblo fits into the marketplace, it’s probably best to consider its rivals. Primarily, these include the Renault Kangoo and Citroen Berlingo Multispace. Whilst cars in this class are still by no means common sights on UK roads, sales in this sector have rocketed over the last four years. Which is good news for those manufacturers that make them, since cars like these are cheap to design and build, with many of the costs already absorbed by the van variants on which they’re based. The Doblo is certainly good business for Fiat. Built using low-cost labour in Turkey, it’s the last Fiat to utilise a conventional steel chassis rather than the more advanced ‘spaceframe’ system used for the larger Multipla mini-MPV. As such, it represents rugged and, above all, cheap engineering, with a design that kee