Fiat Grande Punto Range Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Fiat Grande Punto range
Prices: £9,995-£15,345 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 2-15
Emissions: 115-162g/km
Performance: [1.4 8v] 0-60mph 13.2s / Max Speed 103mph
Fuel Consumption: [1.4 8v] (urban) 37.7mpg / (extra urban) 56.5mpg / (combined) 47.9mpg
Safety: Twin front, side and curtain airbags / ABS with EBD
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height 4030/1687/1490mm

STRETCHING THE POINT

Our Rating: 6.9 / 10

Someone needs to have a word with Fiat. Small hatchbacks aren’t supposed to be as sassy looking as their Grande Punto. Jonathan Crouch reports on the revised range

If you operate on the basis that all the superminis from major manufacturers are more or less equally technically proficient, who’s to say that buying the prettiest one isn’t a reasonable course of action? Fortunately, thanks to a series of recent tweaks, there’s now more to the Fiat Grande Punto than a slick piece of styling.

Studies of car buying behaviour have shown that many customers don’t need the hard sell. All they need is a picture and the buying decision is made. Of course, it helps if the picture being shown is of something sleek and sexy, rather than a car with a face like a bucket of smashed crabs, and that sort of thing is a whole lot easier with coupes and sports cars. Superminis are, by their very nature, short, tall and rather dumpy looking. Fiat, it seems, have decided to disagree with that received wisdom and, against all odds, their Grande Punto has that instantaneous ‘want one’ factor.

But beauty can be a transient thing. Now that it’s been on the market a few years, the shape of the Grande Punto carries with it less of a ‘wow’ factor and the importers have had to turn to more familiar ways of attracting buyers’ attention. Hence the introduction of a five year unlimited mileage warranty, Fiat’s clever ‘Blue&Me’ hands-free entertainment and communications system as standard equipment, the introduction of a sporty GP version and the addition of a larger 8-valve 1.4-litre petrol engine on entry-level versions.

As before, there are three petrol engine options - a 1.4-litre 8v with 77bhp, a 1.4-litre 16v with 95bhp and a 1.4 T-Jet unit with 120bhp – as well as two turbodiesels. These comprise a 1.3-litre 16v MultiJet (75bhp) plus a 1.9-litre MultiJet with 130bhp. To be frank, the two less powerful petrol engines don’t really have the torque to move the Grande Punto really quickly and the diesels are by far the more satisfying choice. To put this into perspective, the 1.4-litre 8v petrol will need over 13 seconds to get the car to 60mph. There are some downsides to being Grande, you see. A high performance version of the 1.4 T-Jet is available in the Grande Punto Abarth model which produces 152bhp. If you want even more power, this can be further upgraded to give 177bhp with a performance pack.

One of the Grande Punto’s most useful features is its ‘City’ button which reduces steering effort when parking to fingertip levels. With the City mode disabled, the steering gains a bit more feel although the Punto has never been a car with a particularly natural and feelsome helm. One of the areas that have come on leaps and bounds since the launch of the last Punto is refinement, and Fiat have added a significant amount of sound deadening material to the Grande and worked on reducing vibration in the engine bay. The result is that the car is far more hushed at motorway speeds, helping to reinforce that all-important perception of quality.

Look at those teardrop-shaped headlamps and chromed air intake. If you saw that appearing in your rear view mirror, you’d be forgiven for thinking a Maserati Coupe had sliced through the traffic and was sitting on your back bumper. Styled by Italdesign-Giugiaro in partnership with Centro Stile Fiat, the Grande Punto is one of those rare cars that looks good from every angle. Five-door or three-door version, it makes no difference. The shape just works.

Interior space - as you would expect from a car this generously endowed in the wheelbase department – is a standout feature. The 275-litre boot is about average for the class but rear leg and headroom is very good indeed. Fiat claim the interior ‘represents the epitome of Italian style’, although that may be stretching the point a little. It’s rather minimalist in fact, the main dials being housed in a curiously flat-topped binnacle with an unexceptional centre console that, from a purely aesthetic perspective, is probably the car’s weakest point.

Still, it’s undoubtedly functional, and if you get confused by the big buttons, self explanatory ventilation controls and stereo controls, then modern life has really got on top of you. One particularly smart touch is the extension of body colour to the soft trims and dash inserts. If the dashboard was finished in grey or black it wou