Best Small Car - Well Almost. Review on Palio - Petrol

The Fiat Palio introduced with lot of fanfare caught my attention and I bought the same. My previous experience with the Uno being excellent, I went for this new baby. I would rate it as the most spacious small car. Everything about the car was good. The biggest surprise till today for me is that I get an average of 10kmpl in Mumbai city with A/C and about 12.5kmpl on highway with A/C. I purchased in April 2002, however, the Model Year option here below only lists till 2001 ! Hence indicated as 2001

The biggest sore point is the after sales service and that is where Fiat needs to pay attention. One particularly bad incident was when all of a sudden the radiator pipe broke on the highway and I was stranded. The dealer when contacted shrugged his shoulders. Luckily one Fiat Service vehicle going in the opposite direction stopped and helped me tow the vehicle to another Fiat Dealer. More surprise awaited me as Fiat refused to change the radiator under warranty (the vehicle was just 3 months old) and I had to shell out about Rs. 12500/- to carry out the repairs. This only shows the mentality of the Italian / Indian company. Otherwise this vehicle breezes around very well, be it a leisure drive or quick visit to the nearby market. In fact I recently did a trip to Goa with my family and we did not have any problems. The only exercise was to fill petrol and I got a consistent 13kmpl average with A/C throughout the journey.

I will not describe the features as by now everybody is aware of it. If anybody wants to buy the Palio, go for it instead of opting for the cramped Santro. The only other car which stands competition to this is the Indica both in terms of space and value for money.