I DRIVE A Volkswagen eUp. It is small, electric, and has a range that would keep a cardiologist in business, and I love it.

Getting into it after a week in almost anything else feels like slipping on a pair of runners you have had for years. Everything is where it should be. You can see all four corners.

Parking is something you simply do, rather than something you manage. I live in an area of rural Cork where two cars meeting on a road could become a moment of stress. Not in my eUp, which I could fit though the eye of a needle without my contact lenses in. 

This week I have been driving the new Fiat Grande Panda, and if I am honest, it has made me happy in a way that a car probably shouldn’t. There is something about it that feels considered, a bit playful, and completely unbothered by the prevailing orthodoxy that says a car must be large, high and black to be taken seriously. I desperately want to own one.

The Grande Panda is not large. It comes in at just under four metres long, which in 2026 practically qualifies as a city car. It comes in colours that actually have names worth saying out loud with a poor Italian accent: Limone Yellow, Lago Blue, Acqua Azure, Passione Red.

It has a face that nods to the original Panda, which was one of the most honestly designed cars ever made. And it comes in both a mild hybrid version and a fully electric version with a claimed range of 320km, starting from just under €23,000 after the SEAI grant and VRT relief.

For that money, you get a car on the same platform as the Jeep Avenger and the Alfa Romeo Junior, which means it is structurally more sophisticated than the price suggests.

Driving it around a city........

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