My little Punto passed the 300,000 Kilometer mark (about 186,500 miles) while driving through Maastricht, Holland this past Tuesday evening.

It's my second car to accomplish that. This one will be nine years old next month. I'm the second owner. Both the first owner and myself live a long way from where we work, so there's a lot of Autoroute/motorway driving involved. I've had the car since March of 2008. It had just under 197,000 Km at the time.

Regular servicing is the key to longevity. The following don't hurt anything...

Use a premium full synthetic oil. I have the oil and filter changed every 20,000Km, which is about 12,000 miles. That's more than the recommended interval of 15,000 Km or 9,000 miles but it seems to work well. I use Mobil 1 0W-40 rather than 10W-40. Again, no problems and I get easier winter starting and slightly better fuel consumption all year.

Don't work the engine hard when it's cold. Wait for the temperature reading to become normal before asking for full performance. You'll get to normal temp faster in the winter if you don't turn on the heater/defroster until the engine warms up.

Turbo engines, both diesel and petrol, need a bit of idle time before being turned off. How much depends on how fast you were going and for how long before you need to turn the key. 30 to 60 seconds will normally be good.

Well done. I couldn't agree more with everything you say.

Congrats. My guess is that you'd have achieved the same had you used a semi-synthetic and stuck to -- or reduced -- the recommended service intervals. You might even have saved a little money in the process.

The turbo advice really depends on the output of the oil pump at idle. Some FIAT pumps put out well under 1 bar at idle, in which case -- unless the engine has had a good thrashing -- switching off may actually be better. If thrashed, letting it run at 2,500 rpm (off boost!) may be much better -- the bearings depend on sufficient pressure and volume to allow them to cool and for the shaft to "float".