I was reading car reviews on mouthshut and felt I should provide one on my Fiat Palio ELX 1.2, Petrol which I drive for nearly 12 years now!
I must say that even Fiat wouldnt have known the great potential and capability of this great car. Fiat Palio is a great survivor by itself, I say this because though Fiat didnt provide the right service network this car proved that it doesnt really need one!.
I bought palio in Dec 2002, and since then I have driven close to 1 lakh kms! I have driven it all kinds of situations:
At a stretch, non-stop to Mangalore, multiple times.
I have driven twice to mangalore via Shiradi Ghat when the road was in almost "impossible to drive " condition
Most of the hill stations in Karnataka
For nearly 7 years I did constant long drives, and I am happy to say this car has maintained me so well and surely better than the way I have maintained it.
In the past 12 years I have had very few issues:
AC Fan had stopped working only once that too after doing 50000 kms
I had to change the clutch plates and wire only once
Last year I had to change the silencer assembly
I dont remember taking the car to service centres because of any serious or nagging issues. But I must tell you I did face problems when I took my car to one of the Tata service stations. I left my car there once(again after having driven for more than 5 years) for a normal routine service, and after that a series of problems started, clutch wire issue, clutch plate problem, wiper wiring issue etc. They really ruined my car but this being Palio survived that assault as well.
I am now planning to buy Duster, I doubt if it behaves as good as my palio and if I will be able to keep it for 10 years! Finally, mileage was not something I considered because I loved this car so much I really didn’t bother keep track of how much it ran per kilometer because it simply runs when you want it to.