Lorenzo Sistino, CEO Fiat Automobiles, receives the award Autobest 2008 for the Fiat Linea from Dan Vardie, president of the international jury.

The prize-giving ceremony for the Autobest 2008 award, the winner of which is the Fiat Linea, took place yesterday evening in Istanbul (Turkey). The Fiat Linea was selected by an international jury composed of 15 specialist journalists, representing as many countries which number in total approximately 300 million people: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine.

The Fiat Linea finished in first position with 850 points, ahead of the Kia Cee’d (784), Mazda 2 (705), Skoda Fabia (679) and Toyota Auris (583). More specifically, the Autobest award requires that the jury names the winner from among five finalists based on thirteen criteria including design, comfort, affordability, driveability, price and value. To express their verdict, each member has 240 points to distribute among the five cars, with a predetermined maximum number of votes for each category.

Lorenzo Sistino, Managing Director of Fiat Automobiles, accepted the trophy and said: «The Italian word “Linea” has two distinct meanings: style and direction. We naturally wanted to give this car, as we do all of our products, a most distinctive Italian style. Additionally, this car was to meet the ever growing demand of drivers in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China and South America, where it will eventually be manufactured. Fiat has a long tradition of producing affordable, cleverly designed cars for all and not the few. Intelligent simplicity.

"The symbolism of being in Istanbul tonight is strong. Here, where East meets West. This is Linea’s path as it traverse the globe. It was here, last May, that Linea was launched and it is here in Turkey where the first cars came off the production lines of our associate company, Tofas."

The Autobest 2008 award confirms the excellent welcome which Fiat Linea has received in Europe. This three-volume, segment C sedan stands out in terms of original style, functionality and driveability, in addition to offering a very competitive price/content ratio.

Resulting from the cooperation with Tofas A.S., the equal-stake joint venture between Fiat Auto and Koç Holding listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, the new car is manufactured in the Turkish plant in Bursa and marketed in a number of European and non-European countries, from Spain to Germany and from Morocco to Finland. Furthermore, from next year on, the Fiat Linea will also be manufactured and sold in Brazil, China, Russia and India.

With a clearly international flavour, the new model was designed by the Fiat Style Centre and enjoys elegant, dynamic and distinctly “Italian” external lines. This extraordinary stylistic heritage results in the Fiat Linea, a slender and elegant “4-door” car, but at the same time with generous dimensions which place it at the top of its range: 4.56 metres long, 1.73 m wide, 1.5 m high, in addition to a generous boot capacity of 500 litres.