Waste of money, an unreliable car. Review on Fiat Grande Punto

Bought Punto Grande (Petrol) from M/s Rama Motors, Okhla Delhi, on 9 April 2010.

Model: Petrol version, Dynamic 1.2

My daily average driving is 20-30 kms.

Since I have bought this car, I have taken the car to the service center 5-6 times to get it repaired for multiple issues arising in the car mentioned below -

Issues with the Car

There have been multiple issues with this car in the past 3-4 months -

1. The air conditioner of this car is un-successful, for 2 reasons - 1) the blast is in-consistent 2) the air con trips frequently while driving. Even the service center guy admitted it and said the Fiat is upgrading the firmware, so that the air conditioner does not trip. However, the issues still remain

   
   




2. Poor performance on low gears - The car does not do well in low gears - 1). Pick up is poor, specially with A/C on2) As the speed declines, the car is liekly to stop in 2nd gear, if you do not shift back to 1st gear

   
   




3. Fuel consumption - Though the company claims the average fuel consumption to be ~15kmpl, but in last 4 months I have not even crossed 11kmpl in city driving

   
   




4. Question on reliability - This is a very serious issue for me, in last 4 months I have encoutered the following issues -

   
   

a). The rubber sealings are comming off. Infact the rubber sealing of the right back door came off

within the first month

b). The speedometer & other consoles stopped working abruptly

c). Few days back the fuel tank cap was not closing (not getting locked), I got ir repaired and today its

not opening, the lock is jammed

d). Wipers are already making noise

e). The fornt right speaker(company fitted) not working since I purchased the verhicle and despite

several attempts made by the service center to make it work

Issues with the service center

I do not know about TATA cars, butTata ins't good service provider for Fiat. I have tried 2 service centers - Rama Motors (Delhi) and Tayal Motors (Faridabad) and both have dis-appointed me -

1). Poor customer service and pathetic service quality

2). Some-body broke the back light of the car and ihave already paidfor the replacement butit has

beenover amonth and guys at the service center say the part is still not available

So guys, trust my word there are better cars to buy than Punto, even ifFaitis giving discounts on it. I guess they are just trying to sell all the defective Punto modelsby luring customers through marketing gimmicks

Thanks

Gaurav Sharma

gaurav.ibs@gmail.com