I live in Finland and I owned a Brava 80SX -00 from February -02 to November -02. It was registered in February 2000 and had one full year of guarantee left when I bought it. And that turned out to be a good thing..

The car had 55 000 km on the clock when I bought it and 79 000 km when I sold it nine months later. During this time I visited the local dealer 10 times for repairs.

- I had problems with the engine cutting off in different situations. The engine died even during overtaking. Which is nice, when you are beside a truck and there are cars coming the other way and your car dies in front of them.. The dealer looked at this problem many times, but they said my car is OK..

- When the car had 65 000 km on the clock, the gearbox had to be repaired, because second gear refused to engage while shifting down from third. The dealer's first comment was that second gear in a Fiat is not supposed to engage while shifting down from a higher gear.. I took the car to them a second time, and then they changed synchronization rings to the gearbox under warranty. But after the repair the gearbox did not work in a normal way in my opinion. But the dealer's opinion was as usual "They all do that. It is not a fault. It is a feature of this model..".

The final straw for me was, when the windscreen wipers stopped working at their intermittent setting. Apparently they had worked, when the mechanic tested them and they did not do anything to them. I went to the car after I went to pick it up from the dealer after "the repair". I switched the wipers on and nothing happened. I went back inside and told them that the wipers don't work. I was told their second favorite phrase: " Keep an eye on that problem and if you think it needs repairing, book a time after a couple of weeks..". I told the service manager, that I will not have that Fiat after a few weeks, because I have ordered a Toyota.

I really liked the styling, although the blind-spots were enormous due to the pillars. I have a couple of friends who have had Bravas/Bravos without any problems. Unfortunately I was not so lucky.. I will never again buy a used Fiat. It is too big a risk. Now I have a Toyota Yaris. It is smaller, but big enough for two people. And extremely reliable. It is nice for a change to be able to do something else on my days-off than take my car to the garage for warranty "repairs"..