Faults:

Had some overheating trouble, when at lights and traffic jams, even when I had the cooling system overhauled and rewired by Fiat (whom don't seem to be interested at all with a car of this age), although I told them money was no object.

Sadly the gearbox went on me, and I found it impossible to source one.

General Comments:

This was one of the best cars I had ever owned. I had a Alfa Romeo 33 Clover Leaf, and a Fiat Strada Abarth. The performance is amazing, as well as fuel costs.

The turbo kicks in lovely at 4000rpm, and I added a K&N filter, which gave an extra 10 horsepower, some Splitfire plugs and always using Agip semi-synth oil.

The cabin was roomy and the seats were comfortable. It does eat tyres though!!!

A great town car with brilliant performance; it once demolished a Porsche 944!!!

Faults:

The car had had a lot of work on it before I bought it (new clutch etc).

In recent times I have had trouble with fuel leaks from the carburettor area - mainly due to hose clamps working loose, but also due to gunk in the fuel tank working through to the carburettor. The car has only cost me $300 in maintenance in two years though, so well worth it!

One thing I would not recommend is buying any Fiat with electric windows. The switches have cheap plastic in them which tends to melt on the circuit board. Unless you want to spend a lot of time with a soldering iron, try for one without electrics.

General Comments:

Despite the shoe-box comments, it has been a great first car, extremely nippy and economical.

Faults:

Rust around the doors and around 45 symbol at the rear.

Needed new water pump at 60000 miles.

General Comments:

An extremely reliable car, 60000 miles and very few things needed fixing.

Fuel economy is excellent, I've been getting up to 600km on one tank (30 litre tank) you can't go wrong here.

Lacks grunt, but will surprise you for the size of its motor, haven't met a 1000cc mini that'll beat it.

Body roll was excessive when cornering, but that was soon fixed by changing the springs to harder ones, now it corners like there is no corner.

Faults:

Nothing at all, just needed 2 clutches in 6 years.

General Comments:

Great little car, my gran had one of these after a Strada, it was a 45, with the all new 'FIRE' engine. It was incredibly noisy, but seemed very very nippy once upto a decent speed, it was also tiny and light (tiny and light as in the doors would slam-shut after you) which meant that it felt as if it was going faster than it really was and would sway from side to side at high speeds.

As with anything old and italian, it was poorly built, the plastics in the interior were incredibly cheap and pasta-like, (would crack easily) but I loved the incredibly basic interior oddly enough, it certainly had charm and the seats were really nice to sit in. The interior also smelt like it was new, probably because the car had only done 25k miles in 10 years, but was still impressive.

Come to think of it, my gran's Uno could have been some kind of special edition as it had thick blue stripey/dotty side markings on the door bottoms and alloy-lookalike plastic wheel trims which actually looked similar to the alloys on Maserati Biturbos of the same era, but were obviously much smaller.

My auntie had a Lancia Y10 at the same time, it was interesting to see the huge amount of parts they shared.

Anyway, I loved it, but it was getting old, old but not unreliable (it's reliability prevented her from selling the Uno earlier on) and seemed very dated by the mid 90s. I'm hoping it lives on today as when we left it, it was nearly A1 except for a few parking dents or so, and it was mechanically sound with only 25k on the clock.

I can't remember the exact reg number, but it was 'E' reg and ended in 'JCW'.