Great car - Needs Help. Review on Fiat Grande Punto

I am Ganesh, would like to share my review on the Punto test drive of the 1.3 Emotion pack, I ow a swift Ldi and happy about my car, actually I was waiting for the Punto to be launched, they announce the launch 2 yrs back and I even waited for that but then no news so went ahead with the Swift.

As all our MS friends said the car is great on looks, comfort, style, safety, handling, space and performance it was a real plesaure to drive, the engine refinment has gone beyond perfection compared to my Swift, especially the torque is excellent, I din notice any strain on the Engine at 4th gear at 20-25 kmpl which is a real match of Engine and gearbox.

The only thing I was not comfortable is the front passenger seating, when you slightly push the seat forward, your right knee hits the dashboard, it will definetly be an issue for tall people (even for 5'5", rest is clean, not very good interior quality but you get for what you give, the inside door handles quality should definetly improve, its the poorest piece in the car. Anyway those are minor blocks.

So I decided to exchange my Swift for the 1.3 Emotion pack, started the discussion with the dealer, since I am a Maruti customer I had high level of expectations from after sales, and Fiat is advertising that they are serious about service this time, BUT it was shocking to hear the facts

1) Warranty - 4yrs or 150, 000 kms is fantastic, the catch here is for any replacement, the spare is covered but you need to pay the service charge, this is not the case with Maruti/hyundai/GM

2) What happens if the car breaks in middle of night at nowhere - the answer is "Sir I need to check" - Booom I am totally upset, because I usually travel on highways with my family and cant take risk on this

3) In Warranty - What is covered and what is not covered and on what condition - the answer is "We need to check currently we dont have the details"

Then I called Fiat helpline to figure out answers for the same question, because some times the rep at dealer may not know the details

for the first question they confirmed that the customer have to pay the service charge for warranty replacement

Second and third question - NO ANSWER, I was told they will send these queries to concerned department and they will contact me to clarify, lets wait and see whether they will respond, if they respond then its true FIAT is really willing to do business in India

Since the product is too good compared to what we get in the market its fair to give time to FIAT to prove thier trust worth.

Thanks, Please post your comments....