News about the Panda

[neverclever]

Fiat India will wait for the green signal from the folks in Italy on the decision to launch the Panda here.

For the time being however, Fiat India says its focus for the next few months will be on the rollout of a customer relationship program rather than on any new launches.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Read the whole Business Line story.

[amit]

It's always been known that the panda can come only in 2005 and i feel it's good for fiat. They can use this year to consolidate their position, improve their dealers and the After sales service and maybe increase the numbers of dealers nationwide too. And yea, fire their marketing team and appoint a totally new aggressive one instead. The panda coming in 05 will be a blessing for the company. IF they launch the panda now, who will buy it?

[aadix]

is this the engine thats gonna be used by gm, suzuki and fiat together???

correct me if i am wrong

[lamborghini]

i think so
not entirely sure
but i feel that fiat should use this engine first in themselves and then share it with the remainin ....
anyway amit i gotta agree with u
customer satisfaction is the first priority ......
look at how the santro is sellin even though the palio is better and there is only a marginal diferane in price and FE
the reason is because hyundai knows how to treat its customers

[amit]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]is this the engine thats gonna be used by gm, suzuki and fiat together???

Ya it's Fiat's patented Multi-Jet Diesel or Jet Turbo Diesel engine.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]but i feel that fiat should use this engine first in themselves and then share it with the remainin ....

I agree with u on this lambo. The JTD is fiat's invention and they should use it first in their own cars. Indian's aren't aware of the auto world scene and if Fiat let's MUL use the JTD first then majority Indian's will believe that MUL made this new engine!

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]look at how the santro is sellin even though the palio is better and there is only a marginal diferane in price and FE

FIat is partly responsible for this. Autocar July has a 6 hatch comparo and chose palio NV as the best. Fiat havn'et come out with a single advert on this. Can u imagine the kinda adverts Hyundai would have come out with if Santro was chosen as the best? God knows what marketing these guys are doing when they can't resort to simple marketing tricks to sell their cars!

[ported_head]

absolutely, the Palio has always been the motoring journalists' favourite car, year after year in every comparo in it's segment, and the FIAT marketing team just happens to ignore the fact every time, if it's oe of the things that can get the people to start buying the Palio if not the only one.
The M-Jet and the JTD engines are brilliant, best recognized doing their job in Alfa Romeos. I feel that only FIAT should be using their own engines, if they are going to start sharing their engines with MUL, the Indian buyers will first look to pick up a MUL car before the FIAT, no matter how much it tones up it's A.S.S.
And, the Panda makes perfect sense in 2005, the company hopefully would have gotten it's act together by then and the Palio D and the Petra are already making a little reputation for themselves. Btw, this month's BSM story on the Petra D mentions the Kurla plant having a Panda and a Multipla running around, so they seem fairly serious about it.