FIAT Grande Panda: reading a city car the way you read a grinder

ResidencyThis piece is part of Small Rituals. Big City. by FIAT - a six-month editorial season at Slow Made City about the routes, habits and small rituals a city day is made of. FIAT is the season's partner and arrives at the same place from the other side: dolce vita is not a distance, it is an attitude towards time. That is also where the meeting with Good Coffee Festival comes from - good coffee and good design do the same thing to ordinary moments.

More about the brand: FIAT Bulgaria and SFA.

When you judge a grinder you do not start with the box. You start with the burrs, the bearing, how much coffee stays in the chamber after a grind. Those decisions photograph badly, which is exactly why they tell the truth: they show what mattered to the maker when nobody was watching.

This piece applies that method to something that is not coffee equipment. Slow Made City is not a motoring publication and the FIAT Grande Panda is a car. But the method carries over intact: look at the materials, look at what has been put where your hands go every day, and look at what was allowed to cost more than it had to.

The company, briefly

FIAT is a Turin marque, and that is a working biography rather than a geographical footnote. The Lingotto factory, with its test track on the roof, was for decades a shorthand for industrial Italy. The brand states its job plainly: accessible mobility for everyone. The Grande Panda was designed at Centro Stile in Turin.

For a coffee person this is a familiar kind of maker. Not the one building the most expensive thing, but the one building the thing that ends up in the most kitchens. Makers like that deserve stricter judgement, not softer: at volume, every economy is repeated a million times.

Design as a quotation, not as nostalgia

The Grande Panda carries the spirit of the historic FIAT Panda without copying it. What is more interesting is where the details were taken from. The dashboard and the headlights carry opal cubes that repeat the windows on the facade of the Lingotto factory. The shape of the cluster and the radio quotes the outline of the test track on that same roof. The PXL headlamps are built from pixel elements running out from the centre of the grille, a reference to 1980s video games.

The FIAT and PANDA lettering is three-dimensional and pressed into the bodywork rather than stuck on top of it. The C-pillar carries a lenticular print that changes with the angle you look from. This is the same class of decision as a logo engraved into a grinder body instead of applied as a sticker: it costs more to make and it outlives the first year.

"No Grey" as a position

Seven colours under the name "No Grey": Limone, Luna Bronze, Acqua, Lago, Passione, Cinema and Gelato. Yellow, bronze, pale blue, blue, red, black and white - and not one of the segment's usual greys.

The specialty coffee scene will recognise this immediately. Good coffee was sold in brown and beige for a long time because that looked serious. The change came when small roasters decided the bag could say something. Refusing grey works the same way: it does not make the car better, but it shows that somebody made a decision instead of choosing the safe option.

The materials your hands meet

On the top La Prima trim the dashboard is wrapped in BAMBOX Bamboo Fiber Tex, a textile that is 33 per cent real bamboo fibre. The main interior theme is called Blu Tasmania and is stitched in yellow. The seats carry the line "Panda made with love in FIAT".

The more substantial decision is elsewhere. Every car takes in recycled material from 140 beverage cartons. From the twenty per cent of plastic and aluminium that usually cannot be recycled, FIAT makes the blue interior component called Lapolen Ecotek - and rather than hiding it, leaves the aluminium in it visibly shimmering.

That belongs to the same family as the roaster left in full view in the middle of the room: the process is allowed to be seen instead of being disguised as something more expensive. In coffee we call it transparency. In an interior it is the same thing - the material admits what it is.

The practical part, measured

It is 3.99 metres long, 1.57 high and 1.76 wide without the mirrors. The boot reaches 361 litres in the electric version. The dashboard distributes 13 litres of storage, one compartment of which is a single 3 litres. Five seats.

At the centre of the interior sits a 10.25-inch touchscreen with wireless phone mirroring, and in front of the driver a 10-inch digital cluster. The electric version carries an integrated retractable charging cable at the front, 4.5 metres of it, which in practice means you are not carrying a cable in the boot and not leaving it somewhere.

If the question is whether a coffee person's things fit - a few kilos of beans, a box of cups, a hand grinder, a carton of filters - the answer is in those numbers. Four metres of length against 361 litres of boot is a good ratio for a city car.

The three powertrains

The Grande Panda comes with petrol, hybrid and fully electric power. The hybrid pairs a three-cylinder turbocharged engine with an electric motor and an electrified dual-clutch transmission that pulls away in electric mode. The electric version offers two battery options.

I am deliberately not listing outputs, consumption or range. In FIAT's own advertising those values travel with a mandatory legal notice that an editorial article does not carry - and numbers without their notice are worse than absent numbers. Anyone who wants them will find them in the official material listed below.

The awards

The Grande Panda took the Red Dot Award 2025 in the Product Design category. In Bulgaria it won the City Car category of the Car of the Year 2026 competition, judged by the country's motoring press after testing more than 50 new cars - which is where the phrase City Car of the Year 2026 comes from.

The verdict

Like any piece of equipment, this one can be described with a single question: where was the difference spent. Here it went into things you see and touch every day - a colour that is not grey, a dashboard made of a material with an origin, lettering pressed into metal instead of stickers, compartments where you actually reach.

This is not a car that boasts in numbers. It is built on the logic of a well-made home grinder: not the most powerful thing in the room, but the one where every daily contact has been thought about. Whether that is enough depends on the same question we ask of equipment - how often you will use it, and how much of your day passes through it.

FIAT Grande Panda begins its global journey - Stellantis Media

Three Powertrains, One Icon - Stellantis Media

FIAT Grande Panda wins the Red Dot Award 2025 - Stellantis Media

FIAT Grande Panda е „Градски автомобил на годината 2026" в България - Stellantis Media

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the FIAT Grande Panda?

A: A FIAT city car, 3.99 metres long, carrying the spirit of the historic FIAT Panda into today's city. It is offered with petrol, hybrid or fully electric power. The brand positions it as "boldly practical, surprisingly iconic."

Q: What awards does it hold?

A: The Red Dot Award 2025 in the Product Design category, and in Bulgaria City Car of the Year 2026, from the Car of the Year 2026 competition judged after testing more than 50 new cars.

Q: What is BAMBOX and why does it come up?

A: The textile wrapping the dashboard on the top La Prima trim. Thirty-three per cent of it is real bamboo fibre. It comes up because it is a material decision at a place your hands meet every day, which is the same criterion we apply to coffee equipment.

Q: Why is there a car piece in a coffee publication?

A: Because FIAT is the partner of the editorial season Small Rituals. Big City. by FIAT, and this piece is declared a product piece from its first line. The other articles in the residency are editorial, and the brand is mentioned once in each.