An Affaire with an Italian Beauty

Sleepless nights of endless research, the eternal state of confusion and two-minds, shaky hands while making the deal (for the fear of being deceived due to lack of car-knowledge), choking secrecy (to give a surprise to my parents), month-long painful patience while learning to drive and the BITS MS exam that only tested the level of my patience; after all this trouble, finally it's official. I got a car couple months back - the much sought after - Fiat Palio Stile 1.6 Sports. It's a scorcher, rest assured.

I had to hold back blogging about couple of quality drives due to the secrecy.

Finally last weekend, I drove the car to Sangli. Told my parents that I have quite a bit of luggage in the rickshaw, so come down on the street to help me pick it up. They did come down waiting for a rickshaw, and when a black beauty approached them, by chance they had a look at the driver, and they couldn't decide if that was a dream or a reality. It was their son, driving that beautiful car.

My dad kept asking me - "tell me the truth, who's car is this? कुणाची कार घेउन आलायस ही??". I had to show him the RC for him to believe that it's my own car in reality! After an hour, mom was still doing in-and-out on the terrace to check the car out. What was needed was somebody secretly filming the whole episode. It was fabulous.

My dad never gets perturbed by surprises. He remains quite composed. But that day, he was bowled. Mouth open. It was a bigger shock for both of them because they didn't even know that I can drive a car now.

Last two months - July and August - have been, without a doubt, the busiest and hectic-most times of my life till date. All those troubles and tortures of those times, were all worth it. I had expected huge cheers from my parents on this surprise, but the extent of it, I had grossly under-estimated.

Enough of emotions, now on to some stats about the car. As I said, it's the much sought after hatchback in the used car segment (along with the yellow S10). It's a top-end Sports edition of a 2008 model, black Palio Stile with 1.6 litre engine, producing 100BHP of power. Such a scorcher of a car, which had run merely 40k kms in 2yrs, I got it for peanuts, compared to it's on-road price of around 5.5lacs at the time of purchase. This, thanks to the very low resale value of Fiat cars in general, and Palios in specific.

Many people criticised me for buying a used car, which is discontinued now, with the bad reputation of Fiat-TATA after-sales-service on the back, and which is known for its low mileage. A lot of these bad vibes about the Fiat cars, IMO, is more of a FUD campaign - Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Of-course there are problems with the car and the service, but they are not soooo significant, for these cars, built like a tank, to deserve peanuts in resale value. I was convinced. And Warren Buffet's principle about stock market, convinced my other paranoid mind. "Be fearful when people are greedy; and be greedy when people are fearful". In pre-owned cars market, prices clearly tell this story - people lust after a Maruti, while they are very fearful of a Fiat. My choice was clear.

Besides, it was a love at first sight for me with regards to this car. And then, good, trust-worthy middleman, clear norms about deal-making and positive outcome during check-up at Pandit Auto made it easier for me.

All in all, here she stands at my door. I have driven her for around a 1000kms now, but apart from a minute chuk-chuk sound (which is suspected to be a WA/WB issue), she has been delightful till date. The handling, steering feedback, total assurance of control at very high speeds and acceptable mileage being the highlights. This deal has probably been the best value-proposition I have accepted till date.

Somebody on Team-BHP has summed up emotions towards Palio very succinctly -
"One thing you have to keep in mind when you buy a Palio. True Italian beauty that she is, expect her to be temperamental; needing love and attention, unlike the German/Korean and Japanese."