Admiration guaranteed. Review on Fiat Linea

Recently, I got a chance to drive Fiat Linea Diesel Emotion. My friend bought it and we planned to visit Parbhani (District of Maharashtra). We decided todrive from Pune to parbhani . It is around 450/500 kms one way. I drove it almost for 1200kms in two days of span. After Aurangabad & Jalana, road was narrow with full of potholes and last around 50 KMs before Parbhani, road was simply horrible. Here I would like to pen down my experience about Linea.

Things which I liked

Driving Comfort: Linea is simply great on this front. It has perfectly positioned steering and seat. Seat height and length can be adjusted to suit your height. Enough of leg room is provided. Position of gear shifter is very comfortable for driver, shifting is smooth too. Grip on steering and elbow support is good. A, B, C peddles are well placed and spaced. Foot rest for clutch is provided. View for driver is good, no blind areas. All necessary controls are nicely placed at handy places. Arm rest is added advantage for driver. Headlights are strong enough and height can be adjusted.

Space inside and comfort for passengers: Linea is a very spacious car and leg room is not at all a problem. A 6 feet guy driving and another 6 feet guy can sit behind the driver. Seats are comfortable and made with supportive material. Lumber support to driver / front seat is good. Automatic Climate control is very effective and needs no manual intervention. AC blower for rear seat is something new in this segment of cars. It plays its role perfectly. Seats provide good thigh support. Cabin is silent enough to not to trouble passengers in the journey. Suspension is effective to absorb all potholes and shocks. I all ways fiat has taken good care of passenger’s comfort and ride quality.

Suspension & Stability: On the scale of 10, I can rate Linea’s suspension at 8 or 9. It is silent, capable of handling all the shocks without passing on the shocks to the seats. On bumpy roads, only a thud is heard not felt. Car’s length, width and height play a major role in its stability. The well designed aerodynamics keeps the car hard pressed and rock steady on the road in any speed. I did not experience any body roll while cornering at high speeds. This is Unlike to Maruti products.

Steering & Breaking: Steering is very smooth but responsive. It feels very natural and provides prompt response to the road angle. It has no artificial feeling like Hyundai Verna. Vehicle response to steering movement is very precise, cornering is easy. Steering controls are so precise that anybody can target a 25paisa coin kept on the road. Breaking is also good and efficient. ABS performs its duties silently. On event of urgent breaking, car stops smoothly without shocks.

Engine performance & Transmission: Engine and transmission both are very refined. Engine doesn’t sounds like diesel. Noise and vibrations are removed completely and cabin is kept totally silent. It delivers perfect power. Engine responds quickly, the power delivery is also impressive. Thanks to equally refined gear box. Gear ratios are optimally designed and you hardly feel the gear shifting. Shifter is smooth too. Shifter’s throw is little long but its effortless. Engine performs great at Gradual and steady speed increment. I touched and remained on 140 km/h for around 3-4 minutes to check engine, gearbox, steering and braking performance and I was not disappointed. Still I would like to drive it on Pune-Mumbai expressway to check its performance on high-speed for longer duration. But overall impression on engine and transmission is great.

Safety, Storage space: Emotion has no air bags but seatbelts has grabbers. Seat belt holds you tight when break is applied and I guess that is a good feature. Lot of space provided for magazines, bottles. Separate space for sunglasses, utility storage under driver’s arm rest are useful. Glove box is also big enough.

Music System: I can rate it 4 against the scale of 5. Was not excellent.

Interior: Interior is thoughtfully laid out with necessary space for necessary items. The plastic quality used for interiors is good. Only the dashboard, headlight, indicator and wiper control plastic looks little cheap and may prone to adopting play. Central console, music system and climate control area is laid out nicely but visually it does not look attractive. Some more efforts on design would have taken care of this aspect. The leather wrap for gear shifter looks cheap kind of material and more workmanship is needed.

Exterior: As far as exterior looks are concerned then car looks great on road. The arches, edges and angles are perfectly going hand in hand to make it a complete design. The chrome inserts used on windows look impressive and add lots of style to the car. Doors are wide for easy ingress-exit. Car looks stunning and “Guarantees Admiration”.

Fuel Economy: The average fuel consumption for our journey was 20 km/l with AC. It is definitley impressive. in city it gives around 17-18 km/l with AC. which is not bad either.

Things which I didn’t like

Clutch: pedal remains very high and footrest provided is lower than clutch pedal’s released position, So moving leg from foot rest to pedal is always a struggling part. If you decide not to use foot rest then holding your leg in clutch’s released position is much painful for you. Fiat should do something for this.

Speed: Increasing speed after 80 km/h and taking it to 100 or more seems exhaustive for engine. Once you reach 100 then it is not an issue.

Ground clearance may be an issue particularly for the road conditions of india.