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Cape Town - A standard-specification Fiat Tipo has completed a journey of 41 000km in just 133 days. That’s more than 308km per day.
The road trip consisted of travelling through 22 countries and 122 cities with motoring journalist Okan Altan in the driving seat.
The Fiat Tipo hatch and sedan will be due for a local release in May 2017 and will be available with 1.3-litre, 1.4-litre and 1.6-litre engines with the option of manual and automatic transmissions.
Stock standard
Before departing from the Tofas factoryin Bursa, Turkey, Fiat says its Tipo did not undergo any additional technical preparations ahead of its long journey.
The first stages of the tour were in Europe - travelling from Turkey to Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and then Russia. The car travelled alongside the Trans-Siberian railway - going for 11 hours a day, for eight days in total.
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Altan then headed to Japan before boarding a ship to Mexico. It, however, was not smooth-sailing for Altan, says Fiat, as a bureaucratic error forced him to wait 11 days before he could enter the North American country.
His journey continued with a 40-day boat trip crossing the 6000km stretch of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Mexico from the United Kingdom. The Fiat Tipo then took on a number of European countries including Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy before returning home.
400 hours of driving
The journey was made possible by the Tipo project, which involved a team of over two thousand engineers and specialists over a period of three years who clocked nearly nine million kilometres of test driving in extreme conditions, says Fiat.
Altan’s journey tested the Fiat in adverse weather conditions. It also tested its reliability and comfort as Altan spend more than 400 hours behind the wheel.
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