Fiat UNO 45s

Do you remember when the world had not yet surrendered to crossovers, to touchscreens, to cars that tell you you are driving too close to the car ahead? I do. And if you want to understand why this Fiat Uno is so interesting, you really have to go back to the Fiat Panda first. In the early 1980s, it had shown that a small car did not have to be complicated at all.

Light, practical, cleverly laid out and affordable. The Panda was the car for everyone. The Uno was then the logical next step. Where the Panda was the simple, functional little city car, the Uno had to bring that same idea to a much wider audience: more modern, roomier, more comfortable and suited to both the Italian city centre and the rest of Europe.

And for that, Fiat called upon none other than Giorgetto Giugiaro, the man who had earlier put the first Golf, the DeLorean and the Panda down on paper.

Giugiaro did something clever: he pulled the car up high, short and upright, with an enormous glass area and an interior that could seat five without anyone having to sit on someone's lap. Rational, spacious, light and economical. In fact, exactly what had made the Panda so brilliant, but a size larger and with a far more modern body.

The Uno was therefore not a completely new idea, but the grown-up successor to the philosophy behind the Panda. And it worked. In 1984, the Fiat Uno was named European Car of the Year. Not because it was the fastest, most expensive or most luxurious car, but because it did precisely what a modern small car was supposed to do. Just as the Panda had done before it.

The Uno was the car with which Fiat brought the Panda's simple concept to maturity.

Only: where have they all gone? Try to picture one now. You can't, can you? Exactly. They have all dissolved. Rusted away, run into the ground by their first, second and third owners, scrapped after a little dent because a repair cost more than the car itself. The Uno was so ordinary, so taken for granted, that nobody ever kept one.

And that is precisely what makes a pristine Uno almost impossible to find today. Everyone knew back then that a Ferrari or a classic Alfa might one day become special. Nobody imagined that, forty years later, anyone would get excited about a plain old Uno 45.

Right, back to this one. The Fiat Uno 45s from 1988 offered here, in the colour Blu Nord, is exactly the sort of example that has slipped through the cracks of time. A 3-door FIRE, delivered in Portugal. The paperwork begins neatly at FIAT Auto Portuguesa in Lisbon, with the free first warranty service carried out in July 1988.

After that comes an impressive stack of Portuguese oil cards and service receipts. Those "OLIO FIAT" and Selènia cards tell a story of decades of care: oil changed on time, filters replaced, gearbox checked. This is not a barn find you get to fiddle with for another six months. This is a car that has been taken seriously all its life, and it is precisely those small, seemingly unimportant documents that show how faithfully it has been maintained all these years.

The 45s means the 903 cc FIRE unit, good for 44 bhp. Now I know what you're thinking. Forty-four. That is less than a moped with its restrictor removed. But here is the lovely part: this car weighs next to nothing, has the manoeuvrability of a shopping trolley on an empty car park, and in a car of this weight those 44 bhp feel, surprisingly enough, like plenty.

You don't drive an Uno to break records. You drive an Uno to grin, with the window down, in third gear through a village, while everyone wonders where on earth you dug it up. It is precisely the kind of car in which speed becomes utterly irrelevant and character takes over completely.

Inside it is a time capsule of the highest order. The upright windscreen, the simple dashboard, the cloth upholstery and that gloriously unspoilt 1980s Italian feeling that no designer today would dare to attempt. No screens, no menus, no software updates and no warning telling you to pull over because your coffee is too hot. Just a key, a few buttons, a steering wheel, four wheels and the road. On its original Michelin 155/70 R13 summer tyres it rolls the way it was meant to: light, direct and honest.

And perhaps that is precisely why the Uno is more interesting today than it has ever been. The Panda is now rightly getting a lot of attention as an icon of the simple Italian car, but the Uno was the car that then brought that same idea to a far wider audience. Millions of Europeans drove one. Bakers, students, young families, sales reps, pensioners, everyone.

The Uno was not a dream car, and that was exactly its strength. It was simply the car you needed. And that is precisely why it has vanished. Everyone these days chases the holy-grail Uno Turbo, while the plain, honest Uno, the car as millions of Europeans truly knew it, has become far rarer in pristine condition. This is the Uno that Fiat intended: simple, clever, practical and likeable.

Whoever buys it is not buying an investment that will make you rich. You are buying a piece of a vanished Europe. A Giugiaro design that brought the Panda's philosophy to maturity, with a price tag that wouldn't even get you the bumper off a classic Alfa. A car that draws more attention at any classic meet than the umpteenth red Ferrari, simply because almost nobody has one anymore.

It is small, it is blue, it is Portuguese, it is nearly extinct and it is here with us in Katwijk waiting for you. For the price of a modern e-bike, you get to drive a genuine piece of Italian design history. I would know.

Special features

-Fiat Uno 45s from 1988, 3-door FIRE version

-Logical successor to the Fiat Panda within the compact Fiat concept

-Design by Giorgetto Giugiaro

-Colour Blu Nord, solid paintwork

-903 cc FIRE engine, 44 bhp, manual gearbox

-Economical, light and surprisingly manoeuvrable

-Extensive Portuguese service history with oil cards from 1988 onwards

-First warranty service documented at FIAT Auto Portuguesa in Lisbon

-Original cloth upholstery, atmospheric 1980s interior

-Michelin 155/70 R13 summer tyres in good condition

-European Car of the Year 1984

-Now rare in tidy, well-cared-for condition

-Margin car

Written between an espresso and a nostalgic sigh,