Fiat Palio on the waning glide

Fiat has no favorable conditions in the current Indian car market as its Palio is meeting the anti-climax. It is set to meet the fate similar to Uno, by selling less than 50 units a month which is meager to the net volume of Fiat’s sale. Thus, the exit of Palio gives way to Grande Punto (Palio came in the place of Uno). However, the company CEO revealed that there is no plan to modify Palio, in the wake of ensuing Bharat Stage IV norms,
But it will continue to run.

Thus, Palio will run along Maruti 800 in terms of BS IV norms. This is a somewhat gradual phasing out of Palio as the company itself started promoting its Grande Punto. The dip in sale of Palio Stile(launched in 2001) began as early 2004 as Hyundai, Ford, Daewoo, Tata Motors, GM and Maruti Suzuki stepped into the Indian market venomously. The car is equipped with 1.1 and 1.6 lit version at the price range of Rs3.5 -4 lakhs.

Grande Punto came to the market in June 2009 and sees the sale of 1500 units a month and Fiat has enhanced the car to two versions- Grande Punto 1.2 lit petrol and soon to be launched sports version. Fiat senses the stiff competition from the rival German car maker VW’s Polo but is confident of securing the growth to attain 40% from the existing stage, said the CEO. The company hopes to ride on the newer versions of Grande Punto and Linea in the months to come.

The net increase in the share will be upto 4%. Linea 1.4 petrol is expected to hit the roads by the Q2 of the next fiscal after that the automatic version will come in the end of 2011 or probably a year later. The FY 2009-10 will make Fiat a dull phase with the export of 25000 engines and further fall in the wake of lapse of the incentive scheme in the European market.

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