Fiat is “going further” with the 4×4 version of its Grande Panda, revealed as a concept but confirmed for production with a hybrid drivetrain and a suite of ingenious accessories.
The new Grande Panda’s design was inspired by the beloved and very boxy Panda 4×4 from the eighties, which posed a challenge for the design team.
“We had to go a bit further,” head of design Francois Leboine exclusively told Auto Express at Fiat’s design centre in Turin. “But we didn’t want to make it a caricature. We just wanted to [add] things to make it even cooler, the layer that was missing to finish the car as a 4×4. To say, now I’m ready to go off-road – that was more or less the exercise.”
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The 4×4 is a fond part of the Panda’s heritage, with three iterations of the Panda 4×4 to date. But it hasn’t been a big-seller, Fiat’s head of Europe told us in Turin. “When we stopped the Panda 4×4, we had a revolution!” said Gaetano Thorel. “People saying: ‘You’re crazy, everybody is driving a 4×4. But when you look at the number, you realize that 4×4 was [less than] 5 per cent of the mix!”
If it does happen, the Grande Pande will be the first model based on Stellantis’s Smart Car platform – which also underpins the Citroen C3 and Vauxhall Frontera – to feature four-wheel drive, thanks to an extra electric motor on the rear axle. Fiat says “[the electrified rear axle] feature would enable the Grande Panda 4×4 to deliver impressive performance in urban settings and on more demanding terrain.”
We assume the Grande Panda 4×4 will be a hybrid, rather than a pure-electric, just like the Jeep Avenger 4xe that has one e-motor at the rear and another up front, working together with a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine. In fact, we suspect the Fiat features the exact same set-up, but the brand hasn’t shared any technical details yet.
Fiat has had some fun with the styling, too, adding the small pixel-effect spot lights on the nose and mounted to the roof rack, which offers enough space for what looks like a full-size spare wheel and tool kit. There’s some unique 4×4 badging dotted around, while the graphics down the side highlight the Panda name that’s stamped into the doors.
Finally, the deep Dark Red paint is contrasted by the beige steel wheels wrapped in some nobbly all-terrain tyres, fake skid plates in the front and rear bumpers, and black plastic cladding along the sides.
Renault also wants to get in on the 4×4 act, with a similar version of the new Renault 4 hinted at very recently by the R4 Savane 4×4 concept.
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