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-   -   My Grande Punto - In Fox Trot Azure ~~ (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership-reports/86868-my-grande-punto-fox-trot-azure-3.html)

Congrats and welcome to the club. Seems like it is raining Puntos in Bangalore these days. Feels good to see a fellow Punter on the road :D .

I Agree with Amartya's reply to this. Topics on/about FIAT is discussed very passionately over here which inturn leads to heated discussions and at times people get infractions. I completely support T-Bhp's stand on this and do feel that these infractions are really un-biased :)

Wow. This looks really cool. You have got some good photoshop skills clap: And yes I will give some serious consideration for changing the alloys may be after a couple of years.

Yeah will post about the buying experience which went without any niggles. Total OTR price for premium colour in Bangalore is 7.61L (after corp. discount and includes extended warranty)

@Amartya, Thanks for the clarification Mate..!!

@arunkk, we are waiting for the pics Interior + Exterior & a descriptive report on the performance & other aspects of the car

Excellent choice & beautiful color. Thats a new color for me to start looking for on Bangalore roads.

I saw a wine red Punto yesterday.

The Grande Punto is the most beautiful car to land on our roads and its beauty itself is enough to over come all the short comings such as iffy build quality and low on power engines. I can live with this.

Started to drive my colleagues 1.2 Active quite often and I can live with the massive drop in power when compared to my Ford. The Grande Punto is a special car to own and this is understood by the few who own it.

Dis you really mean "Iffy build quality" for the Punto? Polo and Punto are miles ahead among hatchbacks on build quality when compared to the competition. I am not sure what you meant your comment. Did you really mean the Plastics?

Now let me give a detailed description about my dealership experience..

First I went to Prerana motors (Sarjapur Road) for seeing the car and taking test drive. It was a Saturday afternoon and only one Sales person was there who was busy with another customer. There was no one there to attend us and the person handling finance came into our assistance. He was not knowing anything specific about the car. Then I asked for a TD and even that was not available !! They said TD car is there in the Lalbagh road main office and they will bring it to my residence. I gave my Address & other details before leaving and waited for a week for TD and was surprised to see that nobody even bothered to call. This has to be compared with frequent follow ups done by Advaith Hyundai & Lathangi Ford after the TD.

Now for taking the TD, I went to Concorde motors near Dairy Circle. I was sure about the availability of car there as it was a big showroom and I took an appointment before going. The reception at Concorde was good and TD went well except that the TD car A/C was not working ! For this the sales person gave some lame excuses and I too decided to neglect it.

After shortlist of Punto, when I compared the prices, Prerana quoted about 3K less than Concorde. Also I enquired the finance options with both and Prerana's offer was better. Again I called Prerana motors in Sarjapur road (as it is near to my house) and told them that I am coming for booking and then they took me seriously. I was introduced to the Sales person Somashekhar who handled everything well.

Booking procedures went smooth and Somashekhar responded well to all my calls/queries during the 3 weeks wait time with almost daily follow ups. Car was ready before the promised delivery date.

On the day of delivery, I took the team-bhp PDI checklist. I couldnt do a PDI before registration due to some unavoidable reasons. Anyway they had a PDI checklist with them also which they asked me to check during vehicle delivery. Everything went smooth and I was given a nice intro to the car.

Everything was going well till this point and I was overwhelmed to see my car and was dying to go for a spin after finishing off the formalities quickly. From the showroom, I started the car and moved forward and immediately I noticed some strange sound coming from the left side front tyre. I stopped the car immediately and checked it and I was shocked to see 2 screws missing and the remaining 2 screws were not properly tightened too :Shockked:

This came as a shock as I checked almost everything else properly before taking delivery. Straight I went back to the showroom and I was fuming with anger this time. My doubt was that they changed the tyres before giving to me and forgot to screw it back properly !! I checked the front left tyre very thoroughly now and re-checked the Date on it and that it matched with other tyres. The sales guy apologized to me and he told that the screws were not properly tightened and he even found one screw lying ahead on the road which fell off just after I moved from there. I was not buying all these reasons and questioned them on many things - like how come you didnt notice this while bringing from the yard? There was no proper answers for all this. :Frustrati

Anyway I didnt want to spoil the day and I asked the mechanic there to re-check all the tyres. Making sure everything is proper this time, I left the showroom and this time everything seemed fine. My anger melted by the time I reached the temple for doing pooja.

I would still recommend Prerana motors as I was very satisfied with everything till the last minute of delivery. Except this incident which was quite serious, all other things went very smooth with them.

The Polo is way ahead when it comes to overall quality. Fiat need to do a lot for the Punto. Its not just the plastics in the car, but even outside it and early rusting issues which was a problem on my friends car. These are problem I have seen. I am not just following up on comments on the same subject just because others on this forum have mentioned so. The steering column mount plastics are just horrible.

Oh! no, so now even those plastic buttons on the steering have become horrible is it.

Damn ! Fiat. they shouldn't have provided the same steering mounted control buttons & steering as found on european models on indian puntos as well, they should have given those plastic buttons in gold plated with some diamond studded ascents. :Frustrati

Lets get things straightened up a bit.
Punto is the best in exteriour build quality. Even though Polo comes close to it, Punto is still better IMO.
Now about the plastics
- Some levers (Boot opener, Fuel lid opener) etc feels brittle.
- There is still some panel gap, to be precise the area near the key hole is evident.

Now apart from these, I dont understand what people call as plastic "quality". I dont know what kind of tests are performed to assess the quality of plastics, but from a layman point of view, seriously there is nothing wrong I found in Punto's plastics. Adding to that strictly in my opinion, Puntos interiors feels really up-market in comparison with Swift & Figo.
All my opinion is based on the new 2010 Punto which claims to have improved plastic quality over the earlier version.

Hi Sandeep, Now I understand. Your definition of "build quality" and mine did not match. Yes, tend to agree that the steering control switches could have been better.

All I can say is everything does feel solid but when you look close you get a different picture. My friends car is an Active so it has absolutely nothing extra on it.

I was referring to the plastics covering the steering column mount. Not the additional buttons on the steering wheel. The Active does not have it.

I will look at a 2010 car.

The things that failed & had shoddy workmanship on my friends Punto. The front passenger door lock has never worked since day 1. So the passenger cannot lock the door as he/she steps out. The door has to be shut first and then the driver from inside has to push the door open lever to lock it.

Plastic cladding over front seats pivot point mechanism were not fixed properly.

Coolant leak at the engine thermostat joint. It drained out pretty much all of the coolant. The car never over heated. This was observed when I was doing casual inspection under the hood. This after the car has done just 1500km.

Rusted front suspension strut bolts. I guess pretty much everyone suffers from this problem.

Rusted battery terminal.

Rusted Alternator central shaft bolt.

All said and done I still love this car. Absolutely. The ride quality is simply leagues ahead of anything in its segment and some above it.

I obviously considered the Punto in my car search but to be frank, the interior quality and the niggling issues kept me far away from Punto! Fiat has to do a lot in the interior quality and fit/finish to match the competition but what I feel is more important is to give the buyer a confidence about the reliability of the car - I have read so many ownership reviews of Punto and many of them reported several niggling issues in the first few months of usage itself - gives me no confidence about a hassle-free ownership experience!
That said, the interior feel more upmarket than the Figo for sure, which looked cheap IMHO.
But in the ride and handling department, no one comes close to Punto!

Best of luck for you purchase mate and wish you many happy miles with your beau.

Somehow not able to digest this. How can screws of tires be loose?
I feel that they were fiddling with it. But what could they be doing? Some routine checkup as a part of their internal PDI?
Experts any idea??


Mods: Does the PDI list needs to be updated with "Check if the nuts are there on the wheels?":D

sorry guys ,

can anybody tell me where i can find the TBHP PDI checklist in this site

here you go

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/buying...heck-list.html