I am here to write my ownership experience on Fiat Linea, Diesel, model - emotion purchased an year ago. I will cover my review in three sequences
1.My first impression & How I purchased the car.
2.features of the car.
- My driving experience
My first impression & how I purchased the car:
I went to Concorde showroom, Chennai.This show room was the authorized showroom for Tata Motors until Fiat announced sales and after sales service tie up with Tatas. There were Fiat Linea Dynamic and Emotion models for display. No second thought on its looks. The Fiat linea commercial lives up to its tag line of “Admiration Guaranteed“. I was earlier planning to buy Fiesta Tdci or Verna Crdi ( for pure performance thrill).
When I had a look at the Linea, it had a crouching tiger like appearance from the front.
When I looked from the sides, it felt like a jet ready on the runway. No one would deny
the fact that linea looks much more expensive that actually it is. I got very much impressed
that I booked the car right away and took delivery in couple of weeks. My choice was flamenco
red.
Features
I really liked the board styling, buttons & switches design/quality, steering design,
seats comfort –all wonderful. On the exteriors –
twin barrel head lights, rear lamps and the stylish front grill will get your eyeballs
rolling. Features like climate control a/c, integrated stereo with controls on steering wheel and USB dock are awesome.
Multifunction display, instantatious milage Info, ABS ,
alloy wheels, blue ’n’ me software, rake adjustable steering wheel etc.,
are the other features you should check out in these cars.
The blue and me helps me to just stretch my hdc mobile. Callers calling me are now
really on loud speaker ( all 4 speakers & subwooffer too...)
Many a times , I have felt, when seeing a punto on road, that Linea is just a punto with boot.
Just like Swift + boot= Dzire. But critics dont just seem to accept that. It may be because
of the 10 cms longer wheel base than that of Punto.
The boot is a large 500 litres enough to carry a full family's stuffs. The suspension has been beefed up
and the ride height raised, which works well with the standard 195/60 R15 tyres.
My driving experience on my fiery:
The Steering wheel is Very good to hold and it is really good shape. The Rear seat space is "okay" and the seat reclining angle was very comfy, the ride in the back was unbelievable comfortable. Even when going over speedbrakers or large potholes never did the Linea lose it's composure or give out loud noises when the suspensions bottomed out with 5 heavyweights in the car. The Ground Clearance of 161mm for the diesel car may feel a little but on comparison with Skoda, Octys are running around with 138mm GC. The Petrol car's Ground Clearance is 165mm.
The Power Delivery from the Diesel Engines is smooth and It is very quite inside, outside there isn't much noise except for the usual Fiat Engine cooling fan . Other than that the Engine is quite good.
When extracting a 90ps out of the 1.3l engine, and that too with stringent emission norms, its quite obvious to have a turbo lag, and the expectation never failed. Below 1500 rpm there is a significant turbo lag. With the car weighing more than 1200 kgs, its just struggling with higher gears in slow speeds. But once past 1750 rpm power delivery is smooth till 4000+ rpms. I would have been happy if the 1.6 DDis(120 bhp) would have been plonked into this.
While I was wondering if I could get more juice from under the bonnet I came across the Dragon tuning kit, which is fitted by some of the enthusiasts in Swift, Vista & palio diesels. I thought of giving it a try to my fiery too. I purchased one from USA through one of my friend, and 'MY GOD' my fiery became altogether a different beast after that. The irritating turbo lag
reduced a very very minimum level. The engine feels the grunt right from 1500 rpm. Torque pull is amazing till the red line.
With Dragon tuning kit, my fiery has following output levels.
Max Power: 108 bhp
max Torque: 240 Nm
Everyone reading this would accept that linea's handling characteristics can quite accommodate this much power. This is one type of car which would give you guts to chase a Mercedes at 150 kmph tailgating at just 1 meter distance. The steering response is so good that you can do zig zag's with confidence at 3 digit speed.
I once happened to get in chase with a Civic Automatic. it was in the tambaram, Bangalore by pass road, 1 am in the morning. The road was almost empty.i was cruising at 100kmph when I saw lights gradually nearing in my rvm. He was trying to overtake me , say at 110 kmph.
I was at 2600 rpm, 5th gear. Knowing that I had Dragon tuning kit and 24 kgm of monster torque, i decided to have some fun and floored the accelerator. I suddenly surged forward to 120 kmph. When that guy saw me overtaking him, he too started. I could hear his automatic screaming in kick down mode. Buy that time I have already gone ahead of civic's nose. The race was on and I was going like 130, 140, 150. Till 180 kmph, when we both noticed a lengthy road curve. Both of us slowed down to 120 kmph and after that again started to next 3 to 4kms of straight stretch. It was quite unbelievable that the 125 bhp civic was not able to near me, even though his car could only follow me at 180 kmph.
All the credit goes to magna cum laude 'Dragon tuning kit'.
Ownership experience :
Average fuel efficiency- 13 kmpl in city, 19 kmpl in highways.
Problems so far. Done 15, 500 kms, and changed the indicator wiring under warranty & changed head lights once. No other serious issues.
Verdict:
So, finally, is linea a Fiest/Verna/Honda killer? The answer could be yes if fiat could offer more power (1.6 Ddis for diesel and 1.4 turbo petrol) and most importantly a good after sales service. But as far as I am concerned I am a very very happy and satisfied owner.
