Due to a sudden turn of events in my life, I was looking at moving from two wheels to four. Not that I was giving my set of two wheels, its just that I need a safer medium of transport to go from Point A to Point B.
I was not exactly in the phase of life where I need a car and hence neither was my bank balance prepared for it. So I decided to hunt for a
pre-loved car. Took into account all my viable finance options and figured that 2L is what I would be comfortable with as a my budget for the car. In this range the only decent options that I was getting was the Palio, Zen or the Wagon-R. Heart ruled over the head here and the superior ride quality and comfort too played there parts, but I zeroed on a Palio.
Cutting a long story short, after a brief search of two weeks I chanced upon a beautifully maintained Palio in Pune posted in the Tbhp Classifieds. It was evident from the threads...
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...t-3000-km.html http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-t...ms-update.html
That the car had been kept well and had just 20K on the clock and so began the few weeks of talking, negotiating the deal. It was finally sealed for 2.1L, my father took delivery of the car in Pune as I could not travel from Bangalore for the next two weeks.
My Palio and Dad's Punto
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Finally the D-Day arrived and I could make it to Mumbai to meet my first car!
The first time we met....
Finally on March 14th I set out to complete the 1000kms drive to Bangalore. The day prior to this I had got the car serviced at the FIAT free service camp in Mumbai. And everything was on track. Dad had driven down from Pune and his drive report read straight A's in every aspect.
Me and my friend fellow Tbhp member Krishna started our trip from Mumbai at about 3AM and finished the 1000 kms trip in about 17 hours all inclusive. It was on this trip that the name
Silver Surfer came to be. The manner in which the Palio glides over the road with such precise control is just like the experience of surfing over roads. Through this drive I got 16.7 Kmpl and 15 Kmpl. Which is pretty decent by my standards!
The car's intended use is purely for the highways and a few weekend drives around the city. For major city commuting I still prefer my bike to beat the traffic.
In past 2 months of ownership have clocked 4.5K kms and after the Mumbai-Bangalore run, I've done one 1500 Kms trip to Goa and back. The behaviour of the car was impeccable throughout this trip and again I got mileage ranging from 16.9 - 14.5 Kmpl.
So far car has been running pretty smooth. There are few rattles introduced after the Goa drive thanks to some really really bad roads between Khanapur and MK Hubli.
Looking forward to getting the car serviced. And it is also in dire need of getting an ICE overhaul along with art leather seats. The 5 year old bridgestone S322's are good but they have to go and are waiting to be replaced by Yoko A-drives.
Looking forward to an amazing ownership experience from my first car!