ANNOYANCE GUARANTEED- A Sub Standard FIAT Car

 

Exterior Great Looking exterior styling. One would easily get deceived.

 

Interior (Features, Space & Comfort) Below avearge interiors. Cramped rear passenger compartment.

 

Engine Performance, Fuel Economy and Gearbox Adequate Engine Performance, reasonable mileage, sticky gears.

 

Ride Quality & Handling Reasonable ride quality. Handling is fine.

 

Final Words A Failure Prone Sub-Standard Car taking Indian Buyers for a ride. Wise to Stay away from it.

 

Areas of improvement FIAT's false pride on their products and arrogance attitude towards it's product buyers, I used to be a Loyal and hard core Fiat Fan till 4 months back based on my 10 years owned 2001 Siena. With that experience in mind I again bought a Fiat Grande Punto Registered in Oct 2009- my biggest mistake by reposing faith on Fiat. To cut the long story short, the car developed various problems (viz Mechanical, Electrical, HVAC etc) right from the first 1000 Kms and in the first year of ownership the car made 13 visits to the authorised service centre for attending one problem or the other (some are repeated ones). The ultimate of the problem being the broken clutch slave cylinder in the middle of the traffic in OCT 2010. All of a sudden the clutch slave cylinder push rod (such a crucial component made of cheap plastic) broken while on the move, the spring loaded inner piston assembly (made of plastic again) poped out of the Clutch Slave Cyl and the entire hydraulic fluid (common for both clutch and brakes functioning) got leaked out and the car got stranded. Luck was in my favour on that day I managed to not involve in any collision with other vehicles on the road, primarily due to thin traffic and I was just started from a Traffic Signal. I could not imagine the danger to the life of occupants if the same thing happened while driving in Hilly terrain or on a fast traffic highway. Fearing for the life of Occupants I am scared to drive this car again and left it at the A.S.S for past 4 months. My e mail communications with Fiat (runs to 34 pages) neither could give me the assurance for the Product Design and manufacturing quality of the newgen Fiat cars in India (read Punto and Linea) nor the kind of attitude from Fiat (both India and Italy). Annoyed to the core I have now decided to take legal action against Fiat as the consumer. These are sub-standard Fiat products sold to innocent Indian Consumers as Fiat thinks that they can get away with anything.

 

Style and SturdinessA Failure Prone Sub Standard Product taking Indian Consumers for a ride