For all the noise, how is Fiat really doing?

I agree with you Ravi. Everybody has his day and Maruti, Hyundai are having theirs now. Surprisingly, we talk about Hyundai so much including their A.S.S. How come they were rated so low in the J.D. Power Survey on customer satisfaction?? Was the survey flawed or is this all public perception?

Honestly, you ought to buy what you really loved instead of worrying so much about what the entire crowd is doing. If you get decent (not great) A.S.S, you should be fine, according to me.

Cheers,

Naveen

Yes I agree above the last para, you ought to buy what you really love to buy irrespective of what others doing and saying. Everybody has his day. Once there were Ambessador and Premier Padmini.. Now they are outdated. Ambessador is still in market but I doubt any single individual interested in it. Time is ever changing and who dont change with time becomes history. They are now meant for only Government supply. And that too.. now being overtaken by Indigo and D'Zire. Premier had some good days with NE118, but they could not made themself to go with the market. After that .. Maruti rulled the roads.. and Now we see so many different and versatile models on Roads. But happy to see indian people have now got so many options, choice in context of price, models, varients. And thats all in favour of the Public and also in favour of the manufacturors who know how to deal with the public (specially Indian). 

Edit Remark: Please do NOT quote preceding post (since deleted).

Agreed!!! Thankfully we are still not stuck with the same good ol' Amby and Padmini .

Surprisingly, Amby still sells man..

Cheers,
Naveen

One more thing. On internet you find informed buyers, so you hear so many good things about Punto. Because it is good car and people are discussing about it.
Sadly in India, majority buyers are not informed buyers, internet penetration is very low. See the upper segment cars, where most of the buyer have internet and other things to get information, Maruti and Hyundai are nill.

I would disagree with this statement in letter and spirit.

You're assuming that people discussing this on the net without having to spend any money on the product (or on the media - how much do you pay for your internet access, and how much of it is spent on this discussion?) are better informed than those who are actually putting their hard-earned $ on the end product.

If the net were a true representation of life, Porn would be the biggest contributor to the GDP, Priyanka Chopra, Salman Khan, Sachin Tendulkar and Katrina Kaif would be our Cabinet of Ministers, Rakhi Sawant would be the Prime Minister, FaceBook would replace the daily newspaper and all of us would be driving Fiats.

The whole idea behind this thread was to figure out why we have so much talk about this brand only the Net while in real-life this brand trails every other except the ones that are horribly overpriced.  Attributing all of it to the fact that people on the net are better informed is naive and IMHO misinformed.

Yes, thats right internet is not with all the person. And if they have, they dont have time to spend on it for searching or discussing any product specially a Car which costs about 4-6 lacs for a middle class. So mouth publicity and media publicity works here, but not all the time. Getz and U-va both look good cars and they were frequently advertised on TV channels with Sania Mirza and Saif Ali. But results are just about nil. They are selling about 300-500 units per month. In upper segment (not including BMW, Merdedeze, Audi etc.), I dont agree Maruti and Hyundai are not doing well. With the models they have, there is a decent market for them. Hyundai selling about 3000 units with Verna and Accent, and Maruti is outstanding with D'Zire and SX4, reaching 10,000 units per month.   

Let me try to make me bit clear.
Internet is the only place where you can discuss about anything. Read a magazine or see a TV adv., is one way traffic. you can't discuss.
I believe anybody who has internet access, will not do little research before putting their hard earned money.
Now normal indian buyers, they buy what is selling without giving thought to others. They do talk to their friends/family but not with other experinced person (most of the time).

Now with higher end, why Maruti and Hyundai are not on top. I know they sell decent numbers, but then even Fiat is selling decent numbers.

Fiat is not selling because of their history. And it will take time to correct those mistakes.

Either you have internet or not, to be better informed about a product, you know to know abc of the field. If you don't, then you just end up buying what the masses buy. I do it for many other things in spite of having internet, because I wouldn't just understand many aspects of every other product. I still don't know much about speakers, digital cameras (other than just the zoom and megapixel), washing machine, etc. etc. So, I end up buying what is most popular and avoid others even if some experts say they are good.

Car is a lot more complex thing for most people to understand. So, people rather stick to what is popular.

FIAT sells 1000 lineas steadily ever since launch(that should be it's production capacity as it is unable to export more lineas to south africa),i definitely consider this a good success considering the fact that there are only 99 sales outlet in the entire nation,in Tamilnadu,if you dont purchase it in chennai,you can purchase it only after 320 kms at Tiruchi,in between there are no sales outlets,where as maruthi or hyundai have atleast 3 sales outlets in between,so naturally they are selling thrice as much as what fiat does in the same segment,so a corresponding sales figure of 1000 units is reasonably good 

Net sometimes helps :

For example last year I bought a digital camera of very popular brand in India i.e. Nikon, without doing any research on net of asking for any experts. I found it a very nice camera and for me the results were too good, becasue before this I had a roll film camera. After that when I got net, I did research for this camera and amazed to find that this camera was at the bottom. Then I again scrutinized the results of the camera and found that really it was not perfect as it should be. And after researching on net a lot, this year I got a new camera of CANON for Rs 25k, which was on top of the table on net. And it is really working nicely. Otherwise I was looking for a Nikon camera in same price which is an average performer. So thanx to net, I got a right one. But this was not a big amount so it worked. For car we can not only rely on net. If every buyer go acoordingly to net, then Punto and Lenia should have been on top in their segment. But it is not happening and can never happen. People really go for the products which are populer. Becase they know gaining popularity and reputation is not a easy task. So the buy the populer products with blind eyes.

But manufacturers cannot make people fool on the basis of popularity and reputation. Performance also counts in long run. If you remember, once BPL TV was on top in indian markent in 90s. But now this company is closed dut to competition with LG, samsung, Vediocon and SONY. And SONY is the company whose products were for upper class with too much higher price tag and they said that they make perfect products and cannot compromise with the price. But soon they realised the situation and came down with the price to stay in the market and now doing well.