FIAT SA leaves unresolved the reason for Fiat 500 loss of steering control and then rolling

Sat 8th April my daughter was driving home from CT city on De Waal Drive in the right hand lane. Coming down the hill near the hospital, she heard a “weird” sound, the wheels started “screeching”, she app**** the brakes to find the steering was completely out of control and then in a split second the car rolled and ended up on its roof …… luckily in one of the only clearings on the right hand side of De Waal Drive. She mercifully did not hit any other car, and even more mercifully my daughter was not hurt, but the car is a write off. The car was bought nearly new, about a year and a half ago.

It was a clear day, around 12.30pm, quite a lot of traffic. NO OBSTRUCTION OR POTHOLES on the road, which would have been pointed out to me by the police who were on the scene. MY daughter did NOT report hitting anything at all, which she WOULD have done, had this happened. She said exactly what I have written above.

What was pointed out to me was the snapped Lower Steering Arm which immediately caused suspicion as to what actually caused the car to go out of Control.

As well as my insurance company, I notified FIAT SA. I have tried to speak to MD Robin Van Rensberg on various occasions, but to no avail. I have instead been dealing with Nwabisa Ntlama from his office. ( as well as William Ramano from Customer Relations) We believed that should there have been any fault in that car, FIAT would want to know so as to alert other drivers of this possible fault. Well we were wrong. We were also assured that Fiat would do a thorough investigation of the car. The report they finally came up with is laughable in light of what I say below.

My insurance also had someone look at the car, and all his report said was basically he thought my daughter may have hit something on the left hand side of the road which in turn cause the car to roll. This is clearly not what happened. Here is why I say this.

I have seen the car on a few occasions and have noted and reported to all concerned many times, that there was hardly any damage AT ALL to the driver side ……wheels, tyres or doors. The serious damage is ALL on the passenger side. So the mystery is: How does a car driving in the right hand lane, end up on the right hand side of the road on its roof with all the damage on the LEFT/passenger side of the car??? Clearly something caused the car to go out of control, then spin around to the right, so that it then rolled onto the passenger side of the car and then onto the roof.

Unfortunately I am not an expert, this is only my theory, but I had pinned my hopes on the experts to help explain this mystery. No such luck at all. Fiat’s report, which took ages to get to me, says simply the Ball Joint came out as a result of a collision, therefore FIAT SA accept NO LIABILITY for the accident. End of story from them !!!!!

Since I received the report from them, on the 30th May, I have sent emails on two occasions to the above mentioned, as well as Abegail Kgobodi , who sent me the report, to get a response to my questions regarding their report

I am appalled to say that to date (NOW THE 19th AUGUST) not one of them has had the decency to reply. Particularly hurtful is that MD Robin Van Rensberg has not had the decency to call me even once. I find this disgusting. My daughter could have been ****ed. What would they have said then?? One can only wonder.

The lack of effort on the part of FIAT SA to help find out what really went wrong is just wrong, bad business practice, incredibly bad Customer Relations, and leaves one incredibly angry at the total lack of respect, decency and goodwill.

I don’t expect anything further to come out of this incident as far a FIAT is concerned, and and we have accepted the insurance payout as we were told we would need to spend thousands of rands on a Forensic Metulurgist, and even they fiat could deny it completely so alas we felt we had come to the end of the road.

BUT….. I had to let the public know that this is the treatment we have had from FIAT SA. We will never buy a product of theirs again.