Can the Palio Sedan make a comeback?

[S_budhiraj]

Great Thought Mpower!

Looks like great VFM Sedan. Doing the job right without robbing your bank.

Fiat are u listening, If Maruti can rule the market with you engine, why can't you?

[sridharps]

It is better to discontinue Palio because of numerous negative connotations. However, the most important thing required for Fiat is to show consistent efforts that they are very serious about India.
They have great cars but need to translate that into sales with sincere efforts on the field.

[throttleking]

Fiat is moving very slow in all their endeavors in India. We have been waiting since ages for Lenea and Grand Punto. Not only that they also took longer than expected to launch Multijet Palio. I think as they have already planned to launch of Punto and Lenea they would not get into any other launch.

Just wondering, even the Novo Seana has 1.3 Multijet. Looks like more than car their tiny beast is doing really great across the world.

[fx45]

how many facelifts is FIAT giving to this range. i am sure its the same old siena and palio that we got years ago. only the front and rear and this time the interior is changed.

[GTO]

To answer your question : A WHOPPING NO! If Fiat wants to make a serious comeback, the only way to do it with with fresh modern products. And please get your strategy / focus in line first. Selling the Linea without support / marketing infrastructure in place will have history repeating itself.

[Eddy]

You must be kidding me. Palio is dead and gone.
Logical steps for Fiat:
1- Get dealerships and service stations in place.
2- Announce a launch DATE for Linea.
3- Launch the car on the above date.
4- Price it well
5- Repeat 2-5 for GP

And in between all that, forget the Palio but keep offering the spares.

[theMAG]

I'm not sure that they have the bandwidth needed to pull off multiple strategic car launches in short time-frames.

[SkyWalker]

Palio Sedan will be a strategic blunder. Especially for people obviously lacks executions skills - they need more time than maruti to fit their own diesel engine in their own car? Where is Linea & GP?.

[prateekswarup]

Originally Posted by Eddy

You must be kidding me. Palio is dead and gone.
Logical steps for Fiat:
1- Get dealerships and service stations in place.
2- Announce a launch DATE for Linea.
3- Launch the car on the above date.
4- Price it well
5- Repeat 2-5 for GP

And in between all that, forget the Palio but keep offering the spares.

I'll second that! The Palio is still a reminiscent of the poor brand image of FIAT. ALthough their engines are getting great reviews and are used successfully by other car manufacturers, somehow FIAT have not been able to use the same engine value in their cars (read Palio MJD). So they should forget relaunching any older Palio/Seinna/Uno but just concentrate on launching the new GP and Linea with full A.S.S support!

[Autocop]

1. I think FIAT should discontinue PALIO MJD.

2. Keep offering PALIO stile Petrol all variants (if possible with a facelift interiors). Keeping PALIO stile petrol would ensure that MJD owners are safeguarded as far as body/suspension spares. For MJD engine spares no issues.

1.1 to compete with the likes of Wagon-R, Zen, Santro
1.6 for the power hungry (no competitors here)


3. I don't know what segement GP is getting launched. But if it's Fabia or Getz crdi segement then I would say it's a mistake. The volumes in this segement are very low. Not much profitable. The objective should be to sell volumes so that people see new Fiat cars again on road. When it happens automatically it helps Fiat's image.

Hence Fiat should Launch a modern Hatchback and Sedan in Swift and Dzire segement. Say GP Hatch and GP Sedan.

The engine options for both Hatch/Sedan being
Petrol:- 1.3 or 1.4 Ltr producing power in 75 - 85 bhp range.
Diesel:- of course revolutionary 1.3 MJD

Provide competetive features and Price it competitively. With Fiat's build quality and smaller waiting period I am sure it will be a winner.

4. Offer Linea in Verna, Fiesta, NHC segement. Again a volume segement with good margins. I believe the volumes in this segement are definately more than the Fabia/Getz.

[JayD]

Oh Come On!!! this is a Pointless thread. Fiat will never introduce this in India, even if they did, it will come with the same crappy interior as the stile. They have not been able to produce a RHD version of the dash pictured above even after around 8 years. Anyways, the days of the palio itself are numbered, its got nothing much apart from the diesel engine going for it. even the build quality has come down drastically.Even its partner Tata is giving it a stepmotherly treatment. Hope this one too flops and the company shuts shop soon!!

[sudipt123]

Well, the success of this car depends on the price & time of the launch. I think the benchamrk would be the diesel dzire, so if they are able to launch it by the year end, it might be a dark horse for FIAT India, because the dzire delivery periods are way too long. Also I don't understand fiat's half hearted attempt in launching MJD. They are not sure about Linea and Grande Punto Launch, neither do they have the infrastructure to cater to these launches at the moment- considering the Linea will be priced at City levels and the GP in the fabia range, Fiat India indeed have a tough task ahead. India is a VFM market- see the recent success of Spark (after they offered discounts). I doubt Fiat might be able to pull this off.

[abhi1309]

The car in the pictures is beautiful I must say, I sent the link to two of my colleagues in office who are die hard FIAT Engineering fans and they were delighted, asking me when is this being launched. Both are waiting for the launch of GP so they can buy it. They too like everyone of us are angry at the FIAT management for a host of reasons like postponing the launch of GP, Linea and taking years to come up with the MJD Palio.

After the launch of Vista, we went to the showroom to take a test drive and also saw the Palio Stile there. Stile's interiors are believe you me, so outdated, it is almost a fraud on Fiat's part to even sell it here. The quality has fallen and so has the finish. We concluded that the Fiat powered Vista is a better buy considering the Italians have nothing at all to sell here in India. Palio is an invalid product. The interiors are spartan. The 1.1 and 1.6 are both impractical options. People want none of them One is too slow and other is too fast. What were they thinking. Maybe they are just making money on the Multijet engine which is given to half the world and themselves too recently. Huh.

Its a 'hope' game with FIAT. We can just hope that they do well, sell good cars in good numbers. I being a FIAT fan has been hoping for almost the whole decade and still they have just the Palio..

[madhu_calvin]

Its always better to bring in new car models rather than face-lifted palio/palio sedan (palio is on its last leg). FIAT is well capable of surprising everybody with their cars even today, hope they wake up from deep slumber.

[metropolis]

No more facelifted versons please. Enough of Palios and Petras. Now Fiat is really counting its days. Even though a class of its own they have tarnished their image in India. To win back the faith and the brand royality it had, they need to be focussed & should concerntrate on new babies only. Gone are the days of old horses. But hopes are bleak.