Its been a week now that i've been driving my formula red palio stile 1.6 sport. Liked everything about the buying experience, except the 1 week delay in shipping from FIAT, and the missing leather gear knobs, leather steering grip and the engine immobilizer - kind of disappointing after having looked forward to it based on the brochures.
The dealer, Manipal Motors at KR Road Bangalore was super helpful, and very prompt in follow up.
Have done around 700+ kms in the past 7 days - around 300km of it on highways around Bangalore. The first two mileage measures have given me 9.6 and 9.8 kmpl, with the 9.8 figure on the highway drive. I think the highway figure wasn't very different from the city figure because most of the highway was under repair and washed away in places. Driving has been fairly aggressive after the first 300kms, and i haven't been too hesitant about taking the revs above 2K. Top speed done so far was 130kmph on the new infrastructure corridor outside Bangalore.
The car is absolutely wonderful to drive, and although i thought i would miss my old zen a lot, i haven't really thought much about my zen after starting driving around in the Palio. I've driven on around 40km of horribly out of shape road (there wasn't any asphalt on the road - just stones and rocks) and was worried about the possible noises creeping in (having read other members on the forum comment about the build quality of the stiles) Must admit that there isn't a single squeak from any part so far.
Quick summary -
Palio Stile 1.6 Sport - June 2007 mfg
Dealer - Manipal Motors, KR Road, Bangalore
OTR - Rs. 4.97L
Dealer freebies - Free Extended warranty, Rs 4k discount, mats, remote locking, sunfilm, mats, car perfume.
ICE - Pio7950 HU, JBL 5.25" components up front, JBL 6x9" coaxials on the parcel shelf, JBL 60.4 amp driving the compos and the mid-end JBL SW
After-market - Leather seats, door pads, gear boot, hand brake grip, steering grip, driver's seat armrest from Ceralli - Went for art leather rear seats, with only the central part done in genuine leather - This brought the overall cost to a reasonable Rs 20K.
Here are a few pics -
Being a newbie, i'm not sure if i've covered all the basic elements of the initial ownership experience. let me know if i've missed anything.
Also, thanks to a bunch of people on this forum for helping me make the decision between the Swift ZXI and the Palio 1.6 - It was a really tough decision, and going through all the posts here was super helpful.
cheers!
raghu