The Fiat Panda 4x4 is back-and it's not an EV!

We chat to Fiat bosses about the car's design - and why hybrid is more suitable than electric power

- Phil McNamara [e-mail]

FIAT is “going further” with the 4x4 version of its Grande Panda, revealed as a concept but confirmed for production with a hybrid drivetrain and a suite of ingenious accessories.

The regular Grande Panda's design is inspired by the beloved and boxy Panda 4x4 from the eighties, which posed a challenge for the designers.

“We had to go a bit further,” head of design Francois Leboine told Auto Express at Fiat’s design centre in Turin. “But we didn’t want to turn it into a caricature. We just wanted to [add] things to make it cooler — the layer that was missing to finish the car as a 4x4. To say, ‘I’m ready to go off-road’ — that was more or less the exercise.”

The 4x4 is a much-loved part of the Panda’s heritage, with three previous iterations. But it hasn’t been a big-seller, Fiat’s head of Europe, Gaetano Thorel, told us in Turin. “When we stopped the 4x4, we had a revolution!” he said. “People were saying: ‘You're crazy, everybody is driving [one]. But when you look at the number, you realise that the 4x4 was actually [less than] five per cent of the total sales mix!”