Here's the recipe: take one Panda 4x4, ditch its little petrol engine in favour of Fiat's 1.3-litre diesel, add cross-eyed foglights and a few clunky plastic panels, jack it up on its springs by a couple of centimetres, add locking diffs... and hey presto, you've got the cheapest diesel 4x4 on the market. Here's the problem: who's going to buy it?

It's an affable little thing, the Panda Cross, and genuinely competent off-road - the previous generation conquered the Paris-Dakar rally (albeit slowly), and this new version feels like it could manage the same, followed by a quick jaunt across the Antarctic to cool off. But out on the open road, not only is the Cross woefully slow - 20 seconds to 60mph feels positively suicidal on motorway slip roads - but the extra ride height and high-stool driving position gives the Panda the top-heavy toppliness of an old lady wearing a lead hat. 

Which makes the Panda Cross a tricky proposition. If you're an urbanite, the Cross's ham-fisted road manners make the front-wheel drive Panda a better bet, while the My First Offroader styling won't impress bluff agricultural types after a cheap diesel mudplugger. The less chintzy Panda 4x4 may be a cool car, but this slightly misses the mark. That said, Fiat only expects to shift a few hundred Crosses in the UK each year: are enough camp, thrifty Highland goatherders out there to take the strabismic little Panda into their lives?