At around 10.30am on Friday 21st July a special breed of nautical Panda slipped into the sea in front of the fish market in Folkestone, Kent, not merely with the idea of enjoying a refreshing swim, but with the specific intention of reaching the French coast and then driving all the way back to its home in Italy! Two support boats, carrying a team from Fiat Auto UK - who even found the time to stop for a swim half way across the smooth, mirror-like surface of the sea that day - shadowed the half-submerged Panda as it swan across the English Channel.
 
 Six hours after it had slipped into the water, at 4.30pm London time, to the undisguised amazement of unsuspecting French holiday makers, Panda Terramare 4 powered itself proudly out of the sea - as its robust four wheel drive system took over - and drove up the Hotel Sirena's beach at Cap Griz Nez in France in some style, thus completing an epic 25 mile maritime journey across one of the busiest seaways in the world, a journey that had seen it sharing the sea lanes with giant supertankers and the many cross-channel ferry boats.
 
Panda Terramare 4 is of course no stranger to water, and having frolicked in the great Italian lakes, the River Po and the Mediterranean off Sardinia, it sailed from Naples to Capri and back before arriving in the UK for its greatest test. Training for the Channel crossing took place on Thursday evening, (20 July), in south-west London's Battersea Park Lake, where surprised lakeside party-goers found themselves sharing Terramare's snug cockpit with the owner as he checked out all the machine's systems prior to its cross-Channel 'dash'.