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Fiat's revival in India is underpinned by a
small but strong and loyal core of Palio owners
and the members of the Palio Users Group
from Mumbai and Pune have just met up in
Lonavala where they tried out the new Grande
Punto and Linea.
The Pune and Mumbai
PUG (Palio Users Group) meet was held at Lonavala. Pune members
were set to
assemble at the B.U. Bhandari showroom at Wakad
at 10 am. I reached there on time thanks to a
mini-race that I had with Anil Rajapure (another
member of PUG). What fun it was with his 1.6
Retro Sport and my 1.6 Stile Sport. We zig-zagged our way through the highway
overtaking at will.
Anyway Vikram,
Vinayak, Ganesh and Mr. Merchant had turned up are we were waiting in the reception area
of the BUB workshop where we soon saw Mr. Gopal (Service
Manager at BUB) drive up in a Linea 1.4 Emotion
petrol. This was the Linea that was to
be used for the test drives during the meeting.
There was also a Grande Punto 1.3 Multijet which we were to
lay our hands on later during the day. I took a
spin in the Grande Punto in the sprawling workshop
premises of BUB but could not really test it in
all the gears due to the limited space in which
I had to do the manoeuvring. I was impressed
though with the performance of the Multijet since I am
not much of a diesel fan and the Grande Punto made me do
a status check on this. In the meantime another
member
joined us in his Palio 1.2 which was maroon in
colour. Mr. Gopal invited us to have some tea
and
snacks in the BUB reception area to which we
gladly obliged. Having had to get up early on a
Sunday, the tea was a welcome relief.
At around 10.45 am, MV (Manoj Vaidya) met us
in his Verna CRDI with rally lights and all. You
can spot MV from quite a distance due to the
fact that any car that he drives has a cloud of
dust around it. Those who have
seen MV driving will know what I am talking
about. Manoj had also brought along his friend
Navendu who had purchased a 1.4 Punto recently
and he brought his red beauty to the meet.
Anyways Mr. Merchant had to drop home his
Grande Punto
and Mr. Gopal was going to follow him in the Linea
so that Mr. Merchant could accompany him in
the Linea to the meet. All the others decided to
wait at the toll-booth at the start of the old
Mumbai-Pune highway for Gopal and Mr. Merchant to
arrive so we would drive together from thereon to
Toni da dhaba. Vinayak had office work that day so he
bid goodbye to all of us. MV parked his Verna at
BUB and hopped into the Punto with Ganesh. Vikram,
Abhay, Anil, Navendu and myself started
out from the workshop to reach the toll booth. It was a
pleasant sight with so many red (Abhay's was a
maroon red Palio 1.2) Fiats waiting near the
toll booth. Many passers-by on two wheels four
wheels were turning their heads at this
assortment of red Fiats. Gopal
arrived at the meeting point with Mr. Merchant
in the petrol Linea and we took some nice photos
of the Linea in front of all the red devils.
We started out
for Toni da dhaba from there and it
was almost like a wedding party with all the
Fiats zig-zagging through the two lane highway.
It is a sight that cannot be shared in words but
has to be experienced. The Fiat "exclusivity"
factor was on display all through this drive
with people being bombarded by the visual treat
offered by so many Fiats. I am sure though that
most of the village folk on the way would have
had a tough time understanding that these were
Fiats but there was no doubt that each one of
them liked what they saw.
After about half an hour we reached Toni da dhaba
and
parked our cars nicely adjacent to each other in
the sprawling parking of the dhaba. Even the
security guard at the dhaba said that all the cars
made for a pretty sight and boy did we agree. Some of
the members started checking out the
Linea and the Punto made available to us courtesy
of
Mr. Gopal from BUB. Gopal himself has a Palio 1.6
Retro Sport and is a big Fiat fan.
Both
the test drive vehicles had plenty of petrol so
it was a real boys day out checking out both the
cars to their heart's content. After the
test drives were done, we had had a few curious
looks from the emus in the dhaba's premises,
all of us quickly settled in the comfortable seating of
the dhaba. There were flavoured hookahs and all
kinds of poisons (read alcohol) on display
there. A very tempting sight, I must say. Ganesh
did a quick check on the Mumbai contingent and it
seemed
they were on their way to the place. Since it
was going to be quite a while for the Mumbai guys to arrive, the Pune
members ordered
some Carlsberg to keep them company and some
veg-non-veg starters to chew on. The
conversation floated from their individual
ownership experiences to some interesting
incidents involving their cars. At around 1pm,
the Mumbai guys started trickling in at the
dhaba. Subodh aka Rudrah arrived in his 1.6
Stile Sport with Romil and Manoj Kumar (MK) for
company. MK was not well but he really wanted to
be here for this event and his enthusiasm is
something that was shared by most of us there.
It seems the Mumbai guys had lost their way and
had been separated into different groups on
their way. After a while we had some more Mumbai
members arrive, namely Parimal and his cousin Amey, Gaurav
Bhandari and Sanjeev. John also made it to the
meet after quite a while and we were happy to see
him. We had a ball of time over the several
hours that we were there.
The Linea and the Punto were not given any
rest time as everyone took their turn
ripping the beauties on the highway. I
personally, found the Linea 1.4 petrol
adequately powered for highway runs (this is
coming from a 1.6 Sport owner). However, it will
be interesting checking the 1.4 petrol
engine's performance in bumper to bumper city
traffic. I was able to pull away cleanly in
fifth gear in AC mode on the flat highway. The
Punto 1.3 Multijet was very impressive with a fairly
silent engine as compared to other diesel
engines in the fray.
At the table however, the beer flowed
and the
conversations become more interesting. Vikram
shared a funny incident where he was stopped by
the highway patrol near Kolhapur to check his
credentials. The cops had a look at his Palio
Retro 1.6 and asked him if this was an 'imported car'.
Mr. Merchant shared how
the Palios were like beautiful ladies with
scantily covered bosoms whereas the Puntos are
beautiful ladies with exposed bosoms. That was a
killer comment and showed the sense of observation
that Mr. Merchant had. Gopal was also at his
funniest and had wise cracks going.
This guy had something funny to say all the time
plus the way he made his eyes pop-out each time
that he made a funny comment only added to the
humour of the occasion.
Gopal also assured us
of
pickup from locations such as Bibwewadi, Dhankawadi
in Pune since distance was a factor for us in
this part of town to not be able to service our
cars with BUB. In hindsight, when Mumbai guys
come all the way from Mumbai to service their
cars at BUB Pune, I found it a bit unreasonable
on my part to not to be able to make it 35 kms
from my home to the BUB workshop. I am nearing
my fourth service (first paid service this month) and
I plan to switch to synthetic oil this time
round going by the overall positive response
that others had had from this changeover.
Parimal,
Vikram and Anil Rajapure were sharing funny
incidents as if they knew each other from a long
time. Parimal had funny bones all over his body
and his impersonation of Tutu Dhawan, (the
automobile expert on TV) had us in splits.
Parimal repeated Tutu's standard lines several
times over and also shared his irritation at
Tutu diverting potential Fiat customers
to Maruti-Suzuki, Hyundai and Honda. Romil
meanwhile had been thoroughly going through the test
drives and sharing his feedback with all of us.
Romil had not got his S10 that day and we missed
not having to check out his drive.
Ganesh also shared that
BUB was printing the PG stickers for all PUG
guys in the Western India region namely Mumbai
and
Pune. There was also talk going on that Fiat may
soon have a Fiat-specific service
centre in Pune. That was some great news if it
actually works out.
It was almost 3.30 pm by then. The bill was a
surprise in terms of the low amount. We split
the bill and had some more photo-ops in the
parking area. By that time someone had parked a
red Santro amongst our red beauties and all of us
covered the Santro and posed for a group photo to
ensure that only the Fiats were visible. Amit
from Mumbai dropped in at this stage in his new
Punto (it was another red beauty in case you
cared to wonder). We tipped the parking attendant since
that guy had made sure that only our Fiats were
parked in a particular section of the parking
and
he did not allow any other cars over there for
several hours (eventually the Santro crept in
somehow). The guys started dispersing with the
thoughts of a overnight trip in the months to
come. We are tentatively calling it the
Mumbai-Pune Annual meet. Since it got late by
that point, we thought there was no point in catching the crowd at Amby valley since the
weekend crowd would have been overwhelming.
This was one helluva meet
and the enthusiasm of
those who came was on equal levels. We were
about fifteen strong by that time. The numbers can only
get better. Finally, I would like to thank Ganesh for
driving forward with this meet and making it a
success. Thanks also to Rudrah for coordinating
the Mumbai part. Last but not the least thanks
to Mr. Gopal and BUB for bringing along the Linea
and Punto for the test drives and I am sure
there will be some bookings from PUG members as
a result of this event (as confirmed by some
members yesterday). Mr. Gopal has done
creditable work in ensuring that BUB and PUG
partnership goes from strength to strength in
the days to come.
by Siddarth
Shetty
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