Help me decide between Punto Evo, Polo and Jazz

Welcome to TFI. You have been given too many suggestions..
Here are mine (repeat of a few others).
Go for diesel, as it is your first car and you love travelling. You will be travelling more often than (1200km/month). Diesels will be light on your pocket.
90 HP or 75 HP, given to your choice (of TD feeling, Rs you can shell out). But, go for emotion variant, that has the max safety features.
Cheers.
Turbo lag, I would like to quote @Sapam : With proper usage of gears you will hardly feel any turbo lag.

 

@Shrijit
Punto, Petrol, Emotion.

As @prabhjot said, stop reading. I will add stop listening to others. The more info you get, the more confused you will be.

I have a 5.5 years old Punto and a 3 weeks old Polo. Old Punto is better than new Polo, this is my experience. You cannot go wrong with Punto.

Don't do test drives. You won't understand anything from a 15 or 30 min test drive. You are new to cars, you won't know what to check and observe also. You will be worried about your driving and cannot concentrate on the car and how it is performing. You can ask one of your experienced friends to do test drive for you and give the feedback. That's what all of us here doing.
As an experienced biker, you can do a test drive of any bike and give opinion. You can select your second car after test drives (after 4 or 5 years).

Petrol - you estimate your driving of 1200 KMs per month based on 2 trips to Kerala (500x2) + another couple of hundred KMs. You will not drive to Kerala every other week. Initially may be, after that you will not. You have your bike and you will use it for daily and short trips. No point spending around 1 lakh upfront thinking of the savings in long term.

Emotion - top end variant - this is your first car and you need to enjoy a great car with all features. When you are going for a Fiat, you won't change the car before 4-5 years. First car should be a special one. The small small features of Emotion variant will make you fall in love with the car more.

Enjoy and have a nice time with your car.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 2, 2015 ---

Haha. I am not going to ask you to explain the logic behind the names Punto (point) and Linea (line)

 

Shrijit,

1.3 MJD 55 kW Punto Evo Emotion.

i too follow the same for city drive it is bike and for highway runs it's Punto. if you dont have any problem with Vita M go for 90Hp.

 

@limraj @Sapam
I recently bought Fiat linea Multijet. Though I drove Indica Vista quadrajet for 5 years, I am still getting habituated to Fiat linea. What is the correct technique to change gears in Fiat linea? I feel turbolag in third and fourth gears when rpm is less than 1500. What is the proper usage of gears to beat turbolag you are talking about?

 

@drsantoshms Even in my Punto Evo 90hp in 3,4,5 gear if the rpm goes below 1500 rpm, I can feel the turbo lag.

based on my experience I have these gear-rpm numbers to drive without turbo lag

1st Gear - Well use this at super crawling speed or start off.
2nd Gear - 1000-2500 rpm ... change gear to 3rd after 2000 rpm or more.
3rd Gear - 1500-2500 rpm ... change gear to 4th after 2000 rpm or more.
4th Gear - 1500-2500 rpm ... change gear to 5th after 2000 rpm or more.
5th Gear - 1500+ rpm

The above setting is for driving on flat plain roads with fuel economy in mind.
For Hill Climb or Ghats, I keep the min RPM for 3,4,5(in case one can drive 5th gear Speed in Ghats) to 2000 rpm.

So. what speed we get with these gears and rpm depends on the slope of the road.

So, to answer your question. If at any gear 3,4,5 if the rpm drops below 1500 then shift down a gear or more until the rpm is above 1500.

Hope this helps.

 

@drsantoshms

The best rpm to change gears is 2000, thats when the turbo spools in. I use this as standard rpm to change any gears upside. Only when the speed drops below a certain value, I down shift.

 

@ghodlur
Right now, I am driving the same way. Thanks.. Your answer boosted my confidence that I am doing it correctly.

 

@drsantoshms
I change gears based on the 'feeling' I receive from the engine. I do not look at tacho for knowing rpm to change gear. I have now got used to it.
But, when I used to get turbo lag, the rpm was around 1500 or below (approx) and then if I wanted immediate response, I would shift down and it would pump rpm above 2000.

 

Thank you all for the overwhelming response and for taking time to reply in detail. Like @JohnyBoy said, I will take one of my experienced friend to help me with the test drive within a week or two. I will make sure I do the TD's of petrol as well. When I called KHT Fiat last time, there was a 2014 90HP White model available for which he was quoting approx 8.5L (approx 50k less than original). I will check more on the 2014 models after I decide on the model after TDs.

Few doubts -

• I am learning driving in a Swift VDI. I understand that it has got Fiat's MJD engine. I could not make out any turbo lag as such (may be because I still do not understand properly what exactly it is). Is it altogether differently tuned when compared to a Punto ?
  
  
• What's the difference between a metallic and non-metallic paint ? Are non-metallic's more scratch-prone and difficult to maintain ? I read one thread on this forum about the same where one member says there is no advantage of a metallic over non-metallic.

 

Yes, Maruti has done a better job of tuning MJD for Swift, for driveability.
Metallic paint : mix of two or more colours. non-metallic : single colour.
In case of dent work, getting the right mix for metallic would be a difficult task.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_color