The factory in Bursa (Turkey), was built in 1969 by Fiat and Tofas, a Turkish car manufacturer. Since 2008 and on the basis of the Fiat Grande Punto, they have been building, together with the PSA-concern, the smallest vans of all three manufacturers, the Peugeot Bipper, the Citroën Nemo and the Fiat which for a long time, was called the Fiorino. All three companies market the new car which can be had as a one or two-seater van and a five-seater mini-bus. (see picture above).
The height of this car may well be usable for tradespeople, e.g., for especially high loads or as a great deal of advertising surface, for private families however, is doesn't bring much. In the lower part of of the vehicle there are enough storage trays and the seating height doesn't profit from the high ceiling either. Actually, the car looks better from the outside than it does from the inside. The hand-width of free space above the heads of even tall passengers is pointlessly and constantly being carried along.
This has an effect on the driving qualities. Right at the beginning of its production, without ABS, the car proved to be not quite stable as far as tipping over was concerned, apart from that, according to the manufacturer's data, the petrol driven car used almost 50% more fuel than the Diesel engine. Because these are comparative values, they can probably assumed for the practice as well. Thus, as favourable the purchase price and the usability with the sliding-doors on the sides may seem to be at first glance, the petrol driven model is by no means a money saver.
It's peculiar, what has happened in the course of the production period. The Peugeot company registered big differences between the success of the utility vehicles and the losses in the motor car sector, at least in Europe. Perhaps as a reaction to this, in 2005, the 1007 was brought out, 10 centimetres lower and also with sliding-doors. The results for the common production project were awaited with suspense. From that point onwards, only Fiat offered the mini-bus, since then however, it had to do without the rear side window.
This apparently, caused them to introduce cost-reductions, because PSA now had only one engine in their programme, a Diesel of course. Fiat offered two engines and complemented the petrol engine with a natural gas version. It's quite simple to recognise, that the arguments were influenced by the excessive consumption figures. Unfortunately, in the latter mentioned version, the loading capacity was also very much reduced. Also the policy concerning optional extras seemed to be a bit strange, as can be seen in the latest listing of the vehicle-data. 06/15
