Yes, you read the title right, but we are not talking about the batting maestro, but the limited edition S10.
Yes its yet another Fiat thread from me
it all started with my friend’s craze to own a palio. He had travelled in my cars and really wanted to buy one for himself. So the search for the same started about a month back or so. Initially he was not sure whether he wanted a 1.2 or a 1.6 or whether he was ok with the ELX variants or the sport variant. I explained to my friend (Prasad) the pros and cons of a 1.2 and 1.6 and he finally settled down for a 1.6 He was ok to sacrifice the mileage for the sheer power of the 1.6.
This formally started our search for the palio 1.6. No website, no contact was left unturned in out relentless searchs. After searching relentlessly for some time, he started to get frustrated. That’s when, TBHP came into the picture. TBHP as usual never lets anyone of us down. There was an S10 for sale at Mumbai by fellow bhpian NitinS10.
Prasad calls up this person and starts to get all the details. Since NitinS10 had just posted 1 picture of the car, we requested for a few more.
Prasad and I now started to outweigh the pros and the cons of buying the car from Mumbai and getting it to Bangalore.
The cost as we calculated, Cost of car + cost of reaching Mumbai + cost of returning to Bangalore + cost of road tax and registration at Bangalore + cost of music system etc etc.
With the cost moving skyward everyday, we thought let’s drop this plan and search for something in Bangalore itself.
But as bad luck would have it, we could not get any good 1.6 in Bangalore. This one month wait is nothing at all. Let’s wait and see.
After what seemed like many many and many more discussions between us over innumerable cups of coffee we finally decided that let’s just go see this car and come.
He was like, worst case scenario, if the car is not good; we do some bit of sight-seeing around Mumbai and return, more or less like a holiday. It seemed like a fair suggestion. Alternatively, we gathered more and more information about the car from the owner.
Any part of decision making process cannot be considered finished without the discussion on the financing. Since the car was still with the “For Sale” tag on TBHP, the seller suggested we pay an advance and block the car. So my friend went ahead and paid an part amount and booked the car. Also, the car’s insurance was expired and since we would be driving the car all the way from Mumbai to Bangalore, we did not want to take any chances and got the new insurance done as well. This did seem like a little bit risky as we were getting all this done and we had not even seen the car in flesh. Somehow we had the feeling that owner seemed like a nice man and not the type who would take us on a ride.
So far, so good, All things going pretty smoothly.
Now, the travel plan starts. We initially planned to leave Bangalore on 16th via the Volvo service to Mumbai which leaves at about 3 in the afternoon, but later decided against it and booked the flight on 17th morning at 6AM.
Since the flight was at 6AM, I suggested Prasad to stay over at my place itself. So we had a quick dinner and start to check if we have picked up everything. Ran through a checklist many times just to make sure nothing is missed.