2006 Fiat Panda MultiEco Concept

Since its divorce and cash-paid settlement with General Motors, Fiat has done some serious thinking about the future. After a near-death brush with accountants, the brand has moved well ahead, bouncing back from the sorry state it was in just a year ago with several new products for the Fiat brand and its luxury/performance subsidiary, Alfa Romeo, destined to enter North America by 2008.

One of the key vehicles behind the Italian firms rejuvenation is the Panda, a city car so impressive that it bowled over judges, winning European Car of the Year back in 2004 when it debuted. Though it is powered by an assortment of engines suitable for small kitchen appliances, Fiats think big motto and practicality strong-card helped this tall, boxy, but extremely affordable Panda put young Europeans on wheels.

Given its outright popularity, Fiat has explored different themed routes with the Panda. The companys first modification was to allow the little machine to head for the hills by jacking up the suspension, fitting it with a torquey MultiJet diesel motor and a lightweight all-wheel drive system. The result? A Panda at home in the wilderness. Fiat also added some colorful cladding and some new bodywork, spot lamps and a safari-style roofrack system to the Panda 4X4, and called it the Simba Concept. It was such a successful prototype that Fiat decided to produce it, giving it the name PandaCross. Its an appropriately cute name for such a cute vehicle.

In more recent times, Fiat has become more serious about the environment; this years Geneva Show served as a platform from which the brand launched a variety of new alternative fuel technologies, including a prototype hydrogen-powered Panda, a near-production methane-powered Panda, and this, the Panda MultiEco.

As the name suggests, the MultiEco lumps together Fiats advancements in the environmental powertrain department. The MultiEco uses the fundamentals of the methane-powered Panda and combines it with other existing ecological engine technologies. By the way, methane-powered cars arent anything new; in terms of the automotive world, methane fuel is natural gas, also known as CNG, a cleaner fuel than petrol. Coincidentally, the MultiEco runs on methane, one of the primary emissions of the black-and-white, bamboo-eating Panda. All silliness aside, what the MultiEco brings to the table is a new engine thats able to run on gasoline, CNG, or a mix of the two, and in the near future, hydrogen will be added to that list.

Built on a modular and flexible chassis with a tall body, the Panda was an easy conversion to natural-gas power. Its frame allowed for two new tanks - one longitudinally, one transversely - to be fitted giving it a capacity of 13 gallons, without detracting from the interior volume or cargo space in any way whatsoever. The MultiEcos powerplant is a converted version of the Pandas FIRE (Fully Integrated Robotized Engine), featuring a new belt-operated starter (BAS). This innovative starter-alternator provides instantaneous starts for the idle-stop mode, and is a similar system to that used in hybrids.


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