5.0 Exterior | 5.0 Comfort | 4.0 Performance |
4.0 Fuel Economy | 5.0 Value for Money |
I have flirting with linea since quite a long time to be precise for more than 10 months, the car is undoutatedly a well build stunner.Finaly on 30th August i took her home.I have been constantly following the reviews written and after driving the italian beauty i thought it would be just to put in my experiance.
The car uses a 1.4 lt 16 V engine which is a advanced starjet engine developed in the year 2003.(check the details from Wikepedia and other sites).The engine uses advanced technology to divert a part of car exhaust(which all know has unburnt fuel) to the combustion chamber and through other technical features improves the efficiency of the car and gives it an excellant milage without compropising with power.The engine has also less moving parts and for the technology used by Fiat requires servicing after 15000Km in comparision to Honda City which goes to garage after 5000km.
Coming to the features of linea one cannot ask for more.The emotion Pack version has ABS,EBD,Airbags,CD-Player,and all other features which gurantee entertainment and safety to passengers.The feature Blue and Me which alows receiving calls and calling numbers and reading texts from mobile is a very thoughtful system in the car developed by Fiat in collaboration with Microsoft.The said system is not only convinient it also adds to the safety by allowing the driver not to take his/her eyes of the road.I must tell you the said system as per my information is not available in any car including the Honda City in India.
Now coming to the nuances of driving her,she is agile,takes the ups and downs of the path with ease and never lets you down.The car is certainly not underpower as has been suggested by many reviews.The 0-100 for the 1.4 lt 8v petrol as per wikepadia site on Fiat linea gives a figure of 14.6 which would be less by atleast 1to 1.5 sec for the 16v starjet engine in the petrol linea,which comes to a 0-100 in 13 sec,which by no means is slow even in comparision to the new City.Of course if you are a F1 driver the car would be slow.
Now coming to the price, the top model of linea comes for Rs 8.5lac on road which is more than 1 lac higher than the new City.
Like most purchaser of cars i had also visited Honda to look at the City and drove it.The engine of the car is undoutedly good, but the build quality,suspension,features,price and the looks according to me certainly not comparible to the Linea.
I have personally nothing againt the City but having read through some of the reviews and after copairing linea-vis a vis city i think it is prudent and just to compare the two cars based on what they offer rather than being swayed by the brand of Honda in India and brand of Fiat in India.As a matter of fact i must tell here that globally Fiat has equal or more reputation in the world as a car maker than the Honda.In fact just yesterday i read a news report of recall of 4,00,000 honda cars in USA, for record fiat till date does not have a car recall as per my knowledge.
Now finally coming to the after sale services.Fiat is desperate and is tring its best to improve services in India on which hinges its sucess in India.The service i think requres improvement and is a bit lacklusture in comparision to Honda or maruti.However all spareparts are readily available and Tata gets the job done.
Thats all i need to say.
beautiful looking car,excellant features,superb build,great handling and safetyfeaturesservicing by tata Fiat needs to improve a