Fiat Linea 125S Long Term Review – Second Report

The Linea 125S comes with a decent sounding music system, navigation (which mostly never works) that’s glitchy, buggy and takes forever to load, the screen is small and is a touchscreen (that also doesn’t work that well). Due to the small size of the screen, the options are equally small and given their size and how bad the touch screen is, it’s quite difficult to input anything onto the display while driving. Even before you start driving the car, it’ll give you this warning about not using the interface while driving and that’s fine but over time it gets so annoying to hit “OK” each and every time you start the car. This car also gets a little strip of orange lighting at the front and I cannot emphasize on how much of a difference mere ambient lighting can do to spice up a cabin. This small addition alone makes the car feel a little more premium.

On paper, the Fiat Linea 125S has a really punchy motor but due to the weight of the vehicle, it cannot properly stretch its feet unless you ring its bells. In city traffic, the motor feels quite smooth with power delivery being very linear, and this makes the engine feel quite smooth in slow-moving situations. Put the pedal to the metal and you will notice how linear and gradual the power delivery is. It has got no real kick in the pants feel and smoothly builds its way into triple-digit speeds, which I can appreciate. What does come as a real kick in the pants though is the amount of fuel this engine consumes.

This really does have quite an appetite for petrol and no matter how or where you drive this machine, you’ll be extremely lucky to get anything above 10 km/litre. This would majorly put off anyone because it doesn’t have the performance to match or justify such dismal fuel economy figures. Another thing that really ruins your experience of driving this car is the gearbox. It’s a terrible gearbox and there is no way to sugar coat it. Gear shifts are far from smooth and sometimes you’re not even sure if it’s in gear. There is no getting used to the notchy feeling and it’s something Fiat should really work on.

This cars feels very mechanical to drive which is both good and bad

The brakes aren’t the best in business but do the job well. They lack a tad bit of pedal feel but offer good progression while braking. The clutch is somewhere in the middle between light and being too hard, it’s just that the pedal travel isn’t shallow and will require you to press the clutch all the way over and over in traffic which can get a little tedious and tiring. The steering wheel on this car feels quite dated, to be honest. It’s a pretty bland and boring looking steering wheel and once you get past the driving position (which let me tell you is really high), you start to notice the stiff nature of it. Normally, harder steering wheels are associated with better driving and steering feel but it’s not the case with Linea. The steering feels quite hard through traffic (which will have your arms ache after a day of city driving), you have to get used to the large turning radius too. Yes, you heard it right, you’ll be turning this hard wheel a lot more often than you’d like to.

Once you’re out on the highway or say some back roads, you literally have no idea what the wheels are doing or where they’re pointing. The hard wheel doesn’t feel all that accurate and this is a car you’d rather prefer not to push into hard corners. The Linea 125S doesn’t exactly feel agile either. With a soft suspension set up and a bulky design, this car has a lot of body roll going for it through hard or sharp turns. This just lets you know that S doesn’t stand for Sport but for Smooth, because that literally is how this car prefers to be driven, in a relaxed manner.

Fiat Linea 125S Service Costs

1. Service Schedule – 15,000 kms/12 months (whichever is earlier)
2. Cost of Service per 1,00,000 Km – Rs. 60,000/- (est.)
3. Cost of Spares –

* Engine Oil Per Service – Rs. 1900/-
* Brake Oil – Rs. 190/-
* Oil Filter – Rs. 430/-
* Fuel Filter – Rs. 2000/-
* Brake Pads (Front) – Rs. 4000/- (with labour)
* Front Bumper (without painting) – Rs. 4500/- (est.)
* Rear Bumper (without painting) – Rs. 3900/- (est.)
* Headlamp Assembly (Each) – Rs. 4500/- (est.)
* Tail Lamp Assembly (Each) – Rs. 2800/- (est.)