900cc, actually quite nippy over 4000rpm. Happy at 6.5k too!

1/3 of a tank has lasted 60 miles so far...

Tim.

Tim.. <the.farm.no (AT) spam (DOT) btinternet.com> wrote:

Umm, well I drove one for several hundred miles in Italy. I'd booked a
Fiat Panda but the hire company insisted that the Matiz was "an
equivalent vehicle". They lied, they're complete and utter shite.

They are about as nippy as a slug in a bucket of wall paper paste.
Climbing the A24 from Rome to L'Aquila the Matiz couldn't keep pace with
trucks, top speed seemed to be 45mph with two adults and two suitcases.
Of course there's no room for two suitcases, the only way to fit the
luggage in was to put the back seat down. It's lucky there were only two
of us.

The steel used to make the car seems to be a derivative of putty. A
hailstorm hit us on the autostrada with nowhere to pull off for shelter.
The car looked like a golf ball after being hit by hailstones, every
panel dented.

There may be worse cars out there, but they tend to have names like
Aixam, Microcar and G-Wizz.

"Tim.." <the.farm.no (AT) spam (DOT) btinternet.com> wrote

They are small and rubbish to drive, very slow, revs like mad and gets blown
about if you get to 70 on a motorway.
I had one as a courtesy car, bright lime green. 1 day was enough.

"Roger" <roger20nospam (AT) ntlworld (DOT) com> wrote

"Tim.." <the.farm.no (AT) spam (DOT) btinternet.com> wrote

Is 180 miles to a tank supposed to impress?

Z

"Zimmy" <z@y.x> gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Depends how big the tank is.

Adrian <toomany2cvs (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

The tank is 35 litres, probably about 30 usable, 6.5 gallons. That's an
appalling 28 mpg from a sub-1.0 litre engine. Not that much better than
I get from a 4.0 V6. If the Matiz were living up to the makers claims,
1.3rd of a tank should have been good for 110 miles. I'm not sure how
the Matiz gauge works. I've found that for most cars the gauge is
optimistic for the first half then gallops towards 'E' for the second
half. If that's true for this Matiz then it's going to end up fully in
4xFord territory for mpg.

"Steve Firth" <%steve%@malloc.co.uk> wrote

Well it's thankfully gone back today! £12 did 70 miles! (it was driven in
typical hire car fashion)

Tim.

Tim.. wrote:
Well, it looks like the gauge is pretty accurate, but assuming £1.05/l,
I work that out as just under the 28mpg that steve estimated. How close
together were the pedals? You weren't accidentally pressing the brake
the whole time, were you..?

Albert T Cone wrote:
It probably felt like it.

Seriously though, every time I drive a very low powered car (typically
sub 1.4 litre), it's lousy on fuel, I don't know how people have the
patience to not thrash them.