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Fiat Punto 90 BHP: 10 years & 2 lakh km update

31st March 2022, 10:10 by Dev Shah

With all the city runs inside Trivandrum, FE has been rather average, but still way better what our Xcent petrol AT manages in similar running conditions.

BHPian CrAzY dRiVeR recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Happy 10th!

Our Punto completed 10 years of ownership earlier in March. Gave the car for a proper exterior and interior cleaning session, also in preparation for what was in store next:

The sale:

This has been discussed for years, and as per my friends - was way overdue! But I've been hesitant to spend huge money over and above the resale of the Punto - to get much lesser incremental value in return. This was one car that surely knew how to punch above its class, in terms of the mechanicals.

However, there were reasons to consider an upgrade:

The age and mileage raising questions on the reliability of the car - as a primary highway machine.
Ageing interior design and feature-list.
Safety. 6 airbags would be welcome, even if we are only the two of us travelling in the car 95% of the time.
Simply the itch to move on - try something better before life runs out.

10 years & 2L km has been one milestone I had set to seriously consider the upgrade. Even though the upgrade decision is pending - I decided to let go of the Punto because this sale was probably the best scenario for the car (you know, considering the car is not just a lifeless mechanical machine).

Last weekend, the car was handed over to the new owner.

The new owner:

And the new owner, thankfully, is someone who knows the car for the last 8 years and have made at least a dozen requests to sell the car to him whenever I move on. Initially planned as an upgrade from his Alto, he later moved on and bought the facelifted SCross Multijet for himself.

When Covid happened he moved back to his hometown of Coimbatore, and I moved temporarily to Kerala. The car discussion never came up, till last month.

During a call - I casually mentioned (since I didn't think he would be interested anymore, post the S-Cross purchase) about the 10-year mark and my serious decision to upgrade, he was quick to claim his rights to it. He needed a second car and the only delay for him to pick up the car was from HDFC to issue the NOC. Within a couple of days, after I managed to arrange the NOC, he drove down and picked up the car.

I hope the car brings the same cheer to his family as it did to mine.

NOC delays with HDFC bank:

Once the sale was decided, the biggest headache was to get NOC from HDFC bank. I had not paid much thought into this process because it was supposed to be all-online and easy. However, once I tried to download it - a technical error hit and the loan number, appearing in the dropdown options itself, was shown as invalid! Approached the home branch, got redirected to loan branch, who took the request and didn't revert for a week. So finally sent an escalation to customer care and although they also initially repeated the 'unable to find your loan dialogue', it was sorted out in a couple of days and the physical copy was sent over.

Final FE details:

With all the city runs inside Trivandrum, FE has been rather average, but still way better what our Xcent petrol AT manages in similar running conditions: