Vocal White: The Chameleon on FIRE

15 Oct 2009 was the day I laid my hands on the beauty for the first time. Bought it through CSD and Concorde, Chennai was the dealer. Buying experience was smooth and I was helped all the way by the sales person from Concorde. It was seven months since launch and by now most of the niggles of Linea had been discussed threadbare. Almost all niggles were related to cosmetics and everybody was all praise for the planted feel provided by Linea. I experienced this planted drive on my way to Kochi from Chennai. New car feeling, sure footed-ness of Linea coupled with the beauty of highway that is NH7, it was an exhilarating drive. My father accompanied me and he was never aware of the speeds I was driving at. Due to the running in issue, I was varying between 80,100 and 120 occasionally touching 140 kmph.

It has been an association of nine months till now and all I can say is that I am an extremely happy owner of a great product. All the shortcomings of the car (change of B -Pillar beading, remap of ECU) have been effectively and courteously handled by Concorde Kochi. I met with a small accident in which the bonnet, front bumper, headlight and front grille suffered damages. The repair and re-paint was done to my satisfaction. I was especially worried about paint matching since Vocal White production has been stopped. Yet, it was done to perfection by the workmen at Concorde Kochi. During this accident, I also learned about taking insurance from the dealer itself. It was a complete paperless experience where I never needed to run after any survey agent.

Enough said, here are some pics (please pardon a bit of digital enhancements :clapping )

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The upholstery used in Linea is of a very decent quality. However, I was looking for quality leather upholstery. A bit of googling and some help from TBHP, zeroed in on Kaarlson. Problem was they did not have a fitter in Kochi. After a week of my inquiry, I was told by Mr Sajith Unni from Bangalore that they have appointed Car Palace as the official fitter for Kaarlson in Kochi. He had sent the samples to Car Palace and off I went to check the color samples. Selected "camel" shade and ordered for the full set. Sajith Unni has the size of the car seats, however, the piping used in the OEM fit has to be removed and inserted into new seats to make them fit snugly. This whole process of removing the seats from their joints and then taking out the beading, inserting it into new seats and finally fitting the new seats is a tedious one. The fitter started at 9AM and finished 11PM with a lunch and a dinner break. It was a great learning experience. Here are the pics:
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Last week, I came to know through J Ravi that kicker plates are available in Chennai. He was kind enough to provide me with the name and phone number of the dealer. So I ordered a set for my Linea. Installed them and here are the pics:

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Breathtaking photographs and Fiat Linea, Kapil.

 

Just the local Golf course. Weather was like "Mausam Hai Ashiqana" :lol:

 

Thanks for the kind words Ravi.

 

You might mean my Linea's interiors dear sir! My interiors are nothing worth getting impressed about :lol: Thanks for your encouragement.