Is the Fiat Tipo the golden joker of today’s car market? It remains “normal”, you can also have it quite cheaply as a station wagon with diesel

It will take a bit of courage to choose a Fiat out of all the new cars, but the circumstances are simply perfect. New cars are getting more and more expensive and more and more tailored to the ideas of someone other than you, the Tipo is sympathetically behind in this respect.

It used to be normal that the possibilities of new cars moved forward almost constantly, and however older goods struggled to gain favor in the market. We don’t have to go too far and don’t even go back too deep into the past – Škoda Octavia I was an unprecedentedly good offer by the standards of a Czech car company, the second generation took everything further, Octavia III came with one of the best platforms of its kind and a number of excellent engines, but then the development basically stopped.

As early as the third generation, there were concessions (three-cylinder engines, limited range of power units, more and more mandatory nonsense on board), and the fourth generation is basically just a step back. You may like the look more, yes, but go on? It’s the same tricked-out with less functioning on-board electronics and a number of little things that don’t make a good impression, and you have to pay extra for everything. A basic liftback with Active equipment for 620,000 CZK? That’s a joke like from Joker, when the same thing in pale blue in the guise of the third generation started at 334,900 CZK.

In the case of new cars, we simply get less for more, that’s not a good deal. And it makes no sense to console ourselves with how much we have become richer in recent years – it is true, but that is a Czech specificity, with which the rise in car prices has nothing to do. We could easily have much higher wages without the cars becoming more expensive, these two quantities change independently of each other, the Germans, for example, could talk about it. So if you want to make a good deal in the new car market today, it’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, and Skodas are nothing but hay.

When I read about the end of the Fiat Tipo for sale in the UK a few days ago, I thought I’d see what this car is selling for here. Honestly, the Tipo was never a bomb and it’s a model that lives on today, which we first tested back in 2016. But it’s not a shame either, and something about it only matures with time. It’s just a normal car, you can also have it as a station wagon, diesel is not a problem, manual transmission is not a problem, a lot of modern nonsense is missing on board thanks to earlier homologation. And even thanks to all this, it remains relatively affordable.

Forget about the outright price, we grew up in the shadow of the “green lot”, but you only need to take out 489,900 CZK from your pocket and you will at least have the basics with a liter three-cylinder turbo with 100 horses. Is it a hoot? Probably not, but just throw in 110,000 CZK and you’ll still get a station wagon with a 1.6 MultiJet diesel with 130 horsepower and a manual gearbox, well below the price of the basic Octavia. Who else can sell you something like this today? Probably no one.

For a rationally thinking customer, this is probably the most meaningful way to an efficient new car, perhaps with a vision of long-term existence. This aspect is always tricky with Fiat, and the TÜV Report suggests that it may not be just prejudice. But you have a 5 year warranty and if the market continues at the rate it has been, it is quite likely that you will sell this car before it ends with very little loss in value.

Tipo must necessarily be out of breath, after seven years and with all the current regulatory pressures, it probably has no chance of being on sale for more than a few more months. Paradoxically, because of this, it can be the golden joker of today’s market – no other car can give you such a combination of features as a diesel station wagon for such money.

I hope you don’t come to burn down my house if it ends badly for you, but the surviving Fiat Tipo, especially as a diesel station wagon, seems to me to be a nice offer in the Czech Republic today. Photo: Fiat

Source: Fiat

Peter Miller

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