If you've visited my Lancia page, you'll know that my decision to buy a new car in 1985 was born of disillusion with the speed with which my HPE had begun to show signs of decay. That put me off buying another second-hand car (for a couple of years, anyway), so the search was on for a small, modern, stylish 3-door hatchback.

Why an Uno?

A number of cars were dismissed out of hand, mainly on the grounds that I found them utterly dull; these included the Yugo 45/55, the Toyota Starlet, the Vauxhall Nova and the Ford Fiesta. I then set about test-driving almost everything else in the class - Renault 5, Peugeot 205, Seat Ibiza, VW Polo. The Polo was rejected due to its poor brakes and spartan interior; the Renault 5 just didn't seem modern enough, and felt flimsy as well; and while I found the Ibiza's body style quite appealing, the quality of its interior just wasn't up to scratch. The 205 was quite tempting, but I'd decided that I wanted a standard 3-door hatch, and to my mind the 3-door 205s always looked like stripped-down GTis, rather than models in their own right. Furthermore, they were not as well trimmed as the Uno, with large areas of bare painted metal in the cabin, and they were also less-generously equipped.

I also test-drove a Nissan Micra. Instinctively, it would have been on my 'boring' list, but I couldn't help but like it. I had heard the speculation that its design had been an early Uno proposal which Fiat had rejected and Nissan had picked up in their despeartion to enter the supermini market (the Cherry didn't really cut it with the European competition). On driving the Micra, I was quite impressed with the smoothness of its ride and refinement of its engine, but was less impressed with its interior. The dashboard looked a mess, lacking the flair with which the Uno's had been designed, and the seats were inferior in respect of look, feel and operation. And externally, while the Micra closely resembled the Uno, it was let down by design details: it had few of the attributes (see "A brief history", below) which not only contributed to the Uno's aerodynamic efficiency, but also marked it out as an up-to-the-minute design.

To be honest, I'd already decided that I wanted an Uno before I'd even set out. Over the previous two years I had followed its every move, reading some of the most remarkably complimentary press reports ever (and from the intelligent end of the market, too - see the Press Reviews section for some examples); collecting each available brochure to add my ever-growing collection; and relishing each opportunity to travel in the very smart black Uno (A777 CPM - where are you now?) owned by my best friend's mother. Coincidentally, within two weeks of my buying the Uno, he bought one from the same dealer, and so did the family friend from whom I'd bought my first car, the Corolla. Small world.

By now you're probably wondering why someone who'd become disillusioned with a rusting Lancia would even entertain the idea of buying a Fiat. Well, you have to put things into context: the Uno was seen as marking something of a renaissance for Fiat, and came with a reassuring six-year anti-corrosion warranty. In truth, Fiat's reputation for rust was only finally put to bed by the fully-galvanised Tipo in 1988, and there are many badly-rusted Unos now littering the streets. But the Uno was more resilient than earlier Fiats, and if properly looked after, was capable of giving long service. I ended up running mine for over 11 years, and even now, having just passed its 14^th birthday, it remains in remarkably good shape.

The Uno was also very well packaged, offering more interior space for passengers and luggage than any of its competitors. This was in part due to its "tall" design, a concept that Giugiaro had developed from his 1978 styling exercise, the Megagamma (see my Prairie article for more information).

The Uno's weak points were its harsh ride and its poor build quality. These two points conspired to ensure that any journey was accompanied by a variety of squeaks, creaks, rattles, bangs and crashes. While I was able to tolerate the ride (it wasn't as bad as the press made out), the noises from the dashboard were sufficiently irritating to prompt me to take it apart and insert self-adhesive foam pads between the components before reassembling it. This simple expedient did the trick; it's just a shame that no-one at Fiat considered doing it at the production stage. To be fair, build quality was improved on later models, and this was acknowledged in the motoring press.

Why a 55S?

The 55S model (formally designated 55 Super) sat in the middle of the 1985 Uno range. I was tempted by the 1.3 litre 70S model, but it was no better equipped than the 55S and was only available as a 5-door. I had made up my mind that I wanted a 3-door model (the 5-door version didn't have the natty recessed door handles, and it somehow shouted "young mum with children" just a little too loudly for my liking).

A special edition 3-door 70SX had been available during the early part of 1985, with electric windows and central locking as standard, but I didn't like its slotted head restraints (those fitted to the 55S were like pillows by comparison), and it also had a rather odd manual sunroof, which slid back over the car's roof and came to rest at a fairly silly angle. In any case, it had sold out by the time I placed my order. So I went for the 55S.

During my first year of ownership, I began to see the potential for upgrading the car's specification, and drew up an extensive wish-list. I had a few minor accessories fitted by my Fiat dealer from new, but I decided to wait until the extended warranty had expired before embarking on the rest of the work, rather than risk invalidating it.

Before any boy-racers out there start salivating, I should point out that my aim was to improve the equipment level rather than the car's performance, with which I was quite satisfied. In fact, my overall aim was to keep the car looking (outwardly) as standard as possible, while adding to it items which in most part were not available from the standard options list for a 3-door Uno.

My inspiration came from cars such as the Minis modified by Radford and Wood & Pickett in the Sixties and Seventies and, to a lesser extent, the Tickford Metro of 1981. At the time, Wood & Pickett's workshops were based close to my home, and I made several trips to their premises to pick up brochures for my collection. The Dimma company also started converting small hatchbacks around this time, concentrating on the Renault 5 and Peugeot 205, but with the emphasis on ultra-wide body kits and performance upgrades. The trend towards highly-specified small hatchbacks was just taking off around this time. The only such model available as standard in 1985 was the Metro Vanden Plas (the Fiesta Ghia didn't quite hit the mark), but within a couple of years, Renault were offering the 5 Monaco and Peugeot the 205 Roland Garros as semi-permanent variants.

The following table summarises the modifications made. In terms of cost, the final bill came to around 80% of the car's purchase price.

Fiat's £380 million Tipo Uno project was born in 1978, with the aim of developing a car to replace the venerable 127. This would be no mean feat: the 127 had been at the vanguard of the supermini revolution, and along with the Renault 5, had effectively defined the class for all other entrants. It's replacement would have to be a world-beater.

Fiat's own Centro Stile (Styling Centre) undertook the early design work on the project, while around the same time Fiat's styling chief, Mario Maioli, commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro's Ital Design company to develop a replacement for the Autobianchi A112, based around a scaled-down version of Ital Design's 1978 Megagamma design proposal. By the end of 1978, full-scale mock-ups of both the Fiat Styling Center and the Ital Design proposals had been produced. Early in the following year, Fiat President Umberto Agnelli and Managing Director Vittorio Ghidella decided that Ital Design's A112 proposal should in fact be adopted as the Uno. (The A112 was later replaced by the Autobianchi Y10, which was sold in the UK as a Lancia.)

With the basic shape decided, attention switched to the detail design. The car was lengthened to accommodate a five-door option, and the tailgate was made more vertical to aid the coefficient of drag (Cd), by allowing for a longer roofline. (Had the original tailgate angle been retained, the resemblance between the Uno and the Nissan Micra would have been all the more remarkable). Aerodynamics were playing a big part in car design in the early Eighties, with Audi using the 0.30 Cd of its new 100 as the main selling point; they even etched it onto the rear quarterlights of early models!

Though nowadays rarely acknowledged as such, the Uno was a masterpiece of understatement, its ostensibly boxy lines concealing a shape so finely honed as to make it the most aerodynamic car in its class, with a Cd of just 0.34, remarkable at the time for a car so short. The ES (Energy Saving) version was even better, having a Cd of 0.33. In styling the car, Giugiaro's team paid close attention to detail, as evidenced in a variety of design elements. For instance, the way the trailing edge of the bonnet kicks up to carry the airflow cleanly over the windscreen wiper; the subtle lip-spoiler moulded into the leading edge of the front bumper; the absence of traditional rain gutters; and the recessed door handles and frameless rear windows of the 3-door model. All these features played their part. By comparison, the Nissan Micra's body, which lacked almost all of these refinements (apart from the rain gutters) registered a Cd of 0.39. It is also often noted that despite appearances, the Uno is considerably more aerodynamically efficient than the X1/9, although it has to be remembered that the X1/9 was developed at a time when universal importance of aerodynamics in car design had yet to become established.

The Uno's interior won much praise for its flair and practicality. The basic concept was the work of the noted Italian industrial designer, Rodolfo Bonetto, while Giugiaro took control of implementing technical solutions based on Bonetto's work. The dashboard drew most of the attention, with its paddle switches mounted within finger-tip reach of the steering wheel, and sliding ash-tray which could be positioned for driver or passenger. The seats were also innovative: the front ones moved through an arc when adjusted for reach, thereby providing more under-thigh support for shorter drivers, and on the 3-door models, both lifted and tilted forward to give unrivalled access to the rear seats. Those rear seats were also unusual at the time, in that the seat-back could be set to two different positions, one more upright than the other, in order to increase boot space. The rear seats were hinged where the back met the squab, allowing both parts to be folded in one-smooth action, at a time when rivals' hatchbacks were either restricted to having just the seat-backs fold down, or required the squab to be lifted up before the back could be folded, in traditional estate car style. The Uno's arrangement is now almost universal in the hatchback market. The front seats were mounted high on their runners, allowing for a well beneath to accommodate the feet of rear-seat passengers, thus contributing to the excellent interior packaging.

When launched(!) at Cape Canaveral in January 1983, the Uno was the first car to bear Fiat's new brand identity, a set of five slanted bars. This was intended as an abstract reference to the italicised FIAT logo which had been familiar since the Sixties, and still appeared on the rear hatch of the Uno. In a case of history repeating, Fiat celebrated it centenary and the launch of the new Punto in July 1999 by adopting a new round badge (which looks remarkably similar to that used on its cars in the Seventies and early-Eighties) yet still the italicised badge lives on at the rear of the car.

Watch this space for a history of the Uno in production, coming soon.

As mentioned above, the Uno was showered with praise by the British motoring press, and even after four years on the market, it was still winning awards.

Here's a taste of the reviews it received:

And it won its fair share of awards over the years, too: