The new tur­bocharged 1.9L, straight-​​4 cylin­der diesel Fiat JTD engine is set to go into pro­duc­tion some­time next month in the car and engine mak­ers plant at Pra­tola Serra in Italy.

Two tunes will be avail­able, start­ing at a 132KW for non Fiat Group cus­tomers, and in June 2008, a 140KW ver­sion for Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Lancia.

Fiat says the new 1.9JTD will boast a huge 400nm of torque, the type of fig­ures nor­mally asso­ci­ated with much larger capac­ity V6 or straight 6 petrol engines, while main­tain­ing Euro 5 emis­sion stan­dards. Fiat claims 300nm of torque is avail­able from as low as 1250RPM (!!) which is around 50% more than the cur­rent engine. The peak is 400NM at a� claimed 2000RPM.

Addi­tion­ally, Fiat says econ­omy is bet­ter than larger capac­ity V6 petrol� engines with sim­i­lar per­for­mance, which is expected given the JTD’s exist­ing fuel frugality.

Fiat claims this is achieved with some new design fea­tures, start­ing with a twin stage tur­bocharger aimed to reduce lag, revised EGR and cool­ing setup, a low­er­ing of the com­pres­sion rat­ing from 17.5:1 to 16.5:1 and low volt­age, metal­lic glow plugs.