It arrived with just 174km on the clock and to date we've added roughly 14 000km as we nipped about the city. Unfortunately we never got a chance to report on the Fiat service experience as service intervals are pegged at an outstanding 20 000kms, we never had any other to need to visit a Fiat service centre either as our Rosso put in a faultless performance.

The Palio Special Series is Fiat's answer to giving young buyers a sporty hatch at an affordable price. The spec levels on this little three-door baby really are impressive. Driver's airbag, air conditioning, electric front windows, central locking, Bluetooth technology from Motorolla mated to a built in radio/CD player make for all one's wants and needs. For R100 900 it really is an impressive package.

On the outside you'll be greeted with a deeper front spoiler, incorporating new fog lights, and deeper side skirts, a chrome tailpipe and sporty 15-inch alloy rims. It really does look the part but sadly there is a down side.

The Palio Special Series is powered by a 1 242cc mill that produces 54kW at 6 000rpm and 102Nm at 3 250rpm. All the fancy mod cons add a lot of weight to the little runner, as do the additional spoilers and bumpers. The diameter 15-inch wheels do it no favour either and suddenly it seems a lot to ask of the small capacity engine.

As a city car, performance is acceptable but with its sporty styling traits everyone expects that it has similarly sporty performance traits and that isn't really the case. Instead it's a comfortable affordable runabout that offers great value in terms of specification but is no midnight drag racer.

The air conditioning drains a lot of power and if you can brave the heat than you'll notice a definite performance improvement, you'll also notice an improvement in the fuel consumption, which is very heavy at 9.8litres /100kms.

One of our favourite features of this car was without doubt the addition of the Motorola Bluetooth kit. In case you've been living in a cave and haven't really got an inclination of current technology trends, let me explain. Bluetooth technology allows electronic devices to talk to one another a bit like infrared only they don't need the close range and uninterrupted line of communication. In other words if I were to leave my Bluetooth equipped phone in my pocket it would still be able to communicate with another Bluetooth enabled device as long as it is within the given radius.

In order for us to fully experience the pleasures of Bluetooth Fiat provided us with a Sony Ericsson T610 which was equipped with, among other things, Bluetooth. We mated our phone to the car's system and hey presto, wireless technology at its best.

Your phone may be hidden in your rucksack in the boot but with Bluetooth you can answer a call and hold a conversation without actually needing the phone to be in your immediate possession, so no need to worry about that five hundred rand fine for talking on the phone while driving.

The interior of the Rosso is as stylish as its exterior with silver inserts in the fascia reiterating the sporty styling of the vehicle, a chunky leather steering wheel and alloy racing pedals complete the look. We had one minor niggle, which saw the passenger wing mirror toggle work its way loose while some of us were not fans of the seat adjustment mechanism. Working on a pivot-like system rather than a slide mechanism rear entry would see the whole seat lift up and move forwards. The complication with this system is when you have parcels in the front passenger foot well as the seat lifts up and then lowers down on top of whatever is on the floor.

Needless to say groceries and the like were squashed on more than one occasion. But we soon learnt from our mistakes, with 280 litres of boot space available it wasn't long before we decided we had better make use of this space.

All in all we had a trouble free and fun filled time with our special edition Rosso. Its performance figures of 12.5 seconds on the 0-100 sprint and a top speed of 164km/h confirmed our feelings that this was no pocket rocket but in SA's scorching climate we were grateful for the air conditioning, which is essential on highveld summers day. Similarly the addition of Bluetooth is a comforting safety feature as smash and grabs are an almost every day occurrence in Jozi. It's comforting to know your valuables are hidden out of site but you're by know means out of touch thanks to Motorola's Bluetooth kit.

These additional creature comforts may steal some of the Palio's performance from an already small capacity 1.2-litre, but at the end of the day we like the idea of big-car gadgetry at a small-car price. We would perhaps have been more willing to sacrifice some of the styling aids such as large diameter rims and flared bumpers if it resulted in a bit more nip...

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