Zotye to produce old Fiat Palio
When the Fiat-Nanjing joint venture died last year, many were expecting Nanjing to produce their own branded Fiat Palio under the Soyat brand, however it looked like Fiat really did take all of its toys away from Nanjing and passed them onto Zotye.
Fiat and Zotye previously signed a deal to sell the first generation branded as the Zotye Multipla, Zotye unveiled the new Multipla at a recent car show but details of its sales date, or price have yet to reach China Car Times. Zotye also signed up the Lancia Lybra to boost its sales line up.
Now the latest model to hit the future Zotye line up is the Fiat Palio (above, left), which Nanjing and Fiat produced together until this year. Under the agreement, the Palio will be built in Zotye’s Changsha factory with an expected production date of Aug/Sept 2009 at the latest according to Zotye. Zotye are also working on building a new sales network, as their current network is based around selling a one model car only.
Zotye’s market position, with it selling one of the most popular SUV’s in China has given it a great cash reserve with which to buy in technology, a plan that looks set to give Zotye an impressive line up in 2009/2010. But the question lies unanswered, the Palio never sold particularly well under the Fiat branding towards the end, so will it sell any better under the Zotye branding? Well, perhaps, but only if its sold at a price thats right.
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What’s confusing here is that last June, Fiat’s China operations chief,Paolo Arpellino, said this:
“Fiat has no cooperative relationship with Zotye in any case, to say nothing of joint venture partnership.”
In other words the relationship doesn’t go beyond FIat’s simply selling the tooling for the Multipla, etc..
Has this now changed?
Well, I don’t know anything about the market in China, but the Palio is THE best selling Fiat in Brazil, where it is still being sold, and VERY WELL sold..!! They move around 20.000 units of these every month, and is by far one of the best selling cars in South America, among with the Volkswagen Gol and Chevrolet Celta and Corsa.
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I’ve driven several of these cars, since the very fist generation, back in 1996. The latest iteration of the Fiat Palio was released last year, but it pratically remains the same vehicle with 4 face-lifts in it’s lifetime.
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In Brazil it is in the same category as the Chevrolet (Opel) Corsa, Ford Fiesta, VW Gol, Peugeot 207, and so on…
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Having driven the Palio, all I can say is that it sucks!! Suspension too smooth and too much travelling course, weak and bad engines (hey, it’s a Fiat..), and particulary, I don’t like it’s design.