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2015 Skoda Fabia 1.0 MPI Nearly Reaches 180 KM/H in Top Speed Test

When we wanted to test out the new Skoda Fabia earlier this year, the company wanted to impress us and sent over a bright yellow car equipped with the most powerful 1.2-liter turbo engine. It had a bit of turbo lag, and the manual gearbox wasn't perfect, but the supermini was a decent compromise for the money.
2015 Skoda Fabia 1.0 MPI Nearly Reaches 180 KM/h in Top Speed Test 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
For the past year or even slightly more, we've been criticizing the decision made by Skoda, VW and SEAT to replace the old 1.2-liter engine with a 1-liter MPI, the same one fitted to the Up! city car triplets.

But it seems they did their homework right, and the 1.0 MPI models do nothing great and nothing awful either. Two videos we've just stumbled upon show how the basic 60 horsepower engine accelerates to 100 km/h and especially how it handles at top speed on a stretch of Autobahn.

The reason the engine sounds sporty is that this 1.0-liter unit only has three cylinders, which means it has an aural delivery similar to an inline 6. We certainly liked that about the Toyota Aygo as well, as the tiny tike popped like a miniature racer.

Because the Fabia 3 is lighter by up to 65 kg (143 lbs) than the Fabia 2, the baseline model tips the scales at only 980 kg (2,180 lbs). However, the new 1.0L engines make just as much power as the old 1.2-liter ones did.

There are two versions, the one with 60 PS and 95 Nm that we see in this video and another with a superior valvetrain that offers 75 and 95 Nm. Only the second one is available on the Fabia Combi estate.

Going from 0 to 100 km/h, the Fabia 1.0 MPI in this video takes exactly 14.02 seconds. That's way better than the official manufacturer claim of 15.7 seconds, and we find that this level of performance is acceptable if your Fabia will spend most of its time in the city.

But the bit that makes us say "what the heck is going on here" is the autobahn top speed footage where the Fabia almost reaches 180 km/h. The official numbers say it will only do 159 km/h and anybody who's driven a car based on the PQ25 platform will tell you that it's a little scary at lower speeds than that.

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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