IndiBlog

Fiat India is planning to roll out a CNG variant of the Palio Stile by the end of 2008 or early 2009 according to market sources. The Fiat Palio Stile was recently launched with the Multijet 1.3 litre Diesel engine which has been received well. Now Fiat wants to solve the problem of it's petrol variants being perceived as being poor on fuel economy by introducing a CNG variant. The factory fitted CNG Palio Stile would come with a warranty and have CNG endorsed on the Registration Certificate as well.

I expect the CNG variant to cost Rs. 35,000-40,000 more than the petrol one. It should offer a wallet friendly mileage of 20 kmpl for the 1.1 litre petrol Palio Stile. The 1.1 litre Palio suffers from poor power to weight ration as it has only 57 bhp to pull a car weighing nearly 1 tonne. With CNG the power would drop another 10-15% making the 1.1 litre Palio slower than most cars on sale today. Fiat would know this and would want to upgrade the Palio's engine to a 1.2 litre 4 valve per cylinder unit before it comes out with the CNG variant.