SCOOP NEW FIAT PANDINA

CONFIRMED All-new 'mini-Panda' will reintroduce a budget city car to the Italian brand's line-up, with focus on hybrid engines

- Jordan Katsianis

FIAT isn't giving up on the city car class, with the brand's bosses revealing to Auto Express that it will build a new baby Panda - or Pandina, as it's known internally. It will join the Grande Panda and its larger siblings we teased last year, and will come with a hybrid powertrain to satisfy European markets.

Fiat's CEO Olivier François told Auto Express: "We will do an A-segment Panda, maybe not this year, or next, but after that." The news came during the launch of the Grande Panda, a new generation of B-segment models for the brand. The 'Grande' moniker also hints that a smaller sub-four-metre version that's closer to the mould of the original Panda is on the cards.

The A-segment Pandina will be 3.6 metres long. That's around 30cm shorter than the Grande Panda, which will rule out it being based on the same underpinnings as most of Fiat's future models.

François told us: "The Smart Car platform was perfect for Fiat, but I can't go any smaller than four metres, which is Grande Panda." The platform is Fiat owner Stellantis's own, and nothing to do with the Smart brand.

Instead, Fiat will use a modified version of the platform that's currently found beneath the allelectric 500e. This contentious architecture was designed and engineered specifically for the new 500, but was created by Fiat in something of an engineering silo before the merger with Group PSA to form Stellantis. This has made the platform largely incompatible with other Stellantis platforms, limiting its potential usage, which until now has been restricted to the 500.

Compounding this issue were the relatively flat sales of the new 500e. And with the old petrol 500 out of production due to emissions regulations, a decision was made to retro-fit a new, small hybrid petrol powertrain to the 500e platform, dubbed Ibrida (Italian for hybrid).