Sure it fits! Driver transports giant wooden pole with tiny Fiat

Who needs a ute, or a truck, or even roof racks? Not this Fiat driver in Poland…

Ever needed to transport a long load and wondered if your car could manage? This driver in Poland skipped the ‘wondering’ and just went straight to action by transporting what looks like a wooden telephone pole in his pint-sized Fiat.

The Type-170 Fiat Cinquecento was built in Poland between 1991 and 1998, and replaced the Fiat 126 (itself a successor to the original and iconic Fiat 500) as Fiat’s mass-appeal ultra-compact car.

Unlike the original which featured a 500cc engine (hence the ‘Cinquecento’ name), the ’90s-era fiat had either a 23kW 700cc two-cylinder or a 29kW 900cc four-cylinder petrol engine under its bonnet. The car has a 2200mm wheelbase and an overall length of 3230mm, which makes this driver’s load choice all the more amazing – and questionable.

Reports online suggest the straight wooden log is approximately 8.7m long (almost 3-times the length of the car) and that the load, made up of more sensibly sized logs is approximately 1500kg. Not bad for a car with a payload of 408kg, which includes the driver!

Needless to say, this is illegal (despite the fitment of a high-vis vest as a flag on the end of the pole) and when stopped by Polish police, the driver faces a fine of 5000 Polish Zloty ($AU1750) for overloading his car’s GVM rating, and potentially a court summons which could attract a further fine of up to 30,000zł ($AU10,000).

While we cannot condone the driver’s actions, we do applaud the attempt.

Have you ever taken things a little too far when transporting a large object? A much younger James Ward managed to squeeze a three-seater sofa bed in the back of a Lada Niva, so with a statute of limitations amnesty, let us know your best (or worst) load carrying approach.

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