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-   -   The Red Rocket - Fiat Grande Punto Sport. *UPDATE* Interiors now in Karlsson Leather (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-drives-initial-ownership-reports/129039-red-rocket-fiat-grande-punto-sport-update-interiors-now-karlsson-leather-33.html)

A complete exhaust revamp or just a muffler (magnaflow maybe?) swap?
My primary concern with the former is the quality (and expense) of the aftermarket setup. The latter sounds less risky.

Oops! Im sorry if I made you reveal it earlier than you wanted to ! Eagerly looking forward to the detailed write-up as i'll be visiting them next year with the Ford hopefully :)

Another funny incident today morning, to be logged on the ownership thread as always :D.

I was on my morning office commute, with the usual staring and peeping by curious fellow motorists. I was at the Forum mall signal in Koramangala, with two bike-borne college students (presumably) next to me. I had wound down the windows since I had switched off the car, so could hear them speaking. Apparently, both of them were not aware of this 'Abarth' brand. The conversation went something like this :

Guy 1 : This car looks different.
Guy 2 : <spells out abarth> what's this?? Abarth??
Guy 1 : I have not heard about this car at all. I don't remember any brand with a scorpion logo.
Guy 2 : Me too, but this car looks familiar
Guy 1 : No man, see the logos inside. It even has the scorpion logos on the wheels. Alloy wheels also look different
Guy 2 : Check out the roof. Usually I have seen some expensive cars come with a glass sunroof.
Guy 1 : You mean the whole thing is glass??
Guy 2 : Yeah, I saw some Mercedes benz with that type of roof once. Whole roof can be rolled down and opened up.
Guy 1 : Wow!
<I'm trying hard to control my laughter at this point>
Guy 2 : Imagine if some coconut falls on the car roof, what would be the repair costs??
< Both of them chuckle >
Guy 1 : Yeah, these type of cars are not good for India man. Only for showoff.
Guy 2 : Some of these cars are so low, they get stuck at speedbreakers. Waste of money. The other day I saw some sports car struggling on a hump, almost went see-saw and Maruti 800 and Altos were overtaking him there.
< both of them chuckle again >

Meanwhile the signal turned green. I wound up the windows, switched the AC back on again and continued, with the bikers still taking 2-3 looks at the car after overtaking me. :) Yet another funny (but memorable) episode in KarthikK's Red Rocket ownership diary.

In other news, the countdown for the big day continues. 1300 km left!!

This is the best .
But seriously man it's a very valid point for cars with sunroof, never thought from that point of view .

The countdown is for ToT remap ?

Cheers

I can answer this...close to 7000 for dent removal plus painting to glass finish again :D

For me; these stares, talks and others are something that cheer me up on road from the otherwise irritating traffic and I'm less stressed at the end of the day. enjoy your stressbusters KarthikK : )

A similar incident happened to me on Sunday
I was coming from Indiranagar towards Banashankari. When I was somewhere inside JP nagar, A CBR 150 guy started following me for quite a distance.
He didn't get a chance to overtake me for the roads were small. as soon as I entered Brigade Millenium, he got a chance to overtake and he came beside me.
He stopped me and asked "Is this the Abarth Punto Evo".
I gave him a big smile and told "Thanks but its the humble Punto modded to look like one"
He told me "Oh modded...very good" and he took an U-turn and went back.
He had actually followed me all this while to ask me this question.
The next few Kilometres to my home, I had a pleasant smile on my face :)

Countdown is for second service, which gives me the keys to a locked door. A locked door behind which a lot of treasures exist - all my modification plans lie behind that locked door. stupid:

Hehe yeah. You must have been getting this since more than a year. I'm still new to these 'unknown brand' stares, comments and enquiries. I am most affected in silk board, madiwala traffic zones. Maybe because of too many colleges / offices (with young, curious people travelling) in these areas.
Haha. You should have said "yes, this is Abarth Punto Evo testing the car in Indian road conditions". He might have wanted to take a snap and put it on the Fiat/Abarth scoops thread. :uncontrol

An update - a very small one, but an enhancement nonetheless. The front badges of the Punto looked plain, boring, redundant. Every MultiJet Punto and Linea on the road had the same badge on the radiator grill. Not that I hate the MultiJet badge, but it could be better. More importantly, it had to differentiate this Punto from the rest. The badge could be spruced up to convey a more spirited MultiJet (which is anyway in the offing in less than a month from now). What better color to convey passion and spirit, than Red? :)

How would I do this?? Simple. I headed out to the nearest accessory shop, got hold of red reflective tape, got it cut to the shape of the "MULTIJET" badge on the front, and covered up chrome with red reflective tape. :D

The result of the work was this:



As always, here are the Before/After pictures

Before:





After:





The red mask is not just a plain sticker covering the chrome. It is also reflective, which means at night, the Red Rocket now shows off its MultiJet status in style to oncoming traffic.

Reflective tape masking the chrome alphabets



In other news, only 1000 km left now for the big day! the build up to the 14th milestone


And milestone no. 14 arrived yesterday


Thanks for reading! Some more minor interior DIYs are on the anvil for this weekend. More to come on this thread very soon.

Its been something that I did on my car. Thank you for the idea. I am heading to the sticker shop near by for this. Your copyright has been violated. Kindly excuse :D

KarthikK, for the first time after opening this thread, I was disappointed
As soon as I saw the words" the red rocket" in bold in my usercp, I thought there is something BIG to start the day with.
But its just a small one :D
Its a good one and surely conveys what you want it to. eagerly waiting for the next K to come up. I don't think I was so eager when my car reached this milestone

dude, when are you planning that other thing we were discussing?

:D

Karthik finally you got this done, suggested you this long back, anyways buddy keep it up !!
I own the rights of this suggestion stupid:.

Just got my 60K service done, no major issues, but yes this service is costly - paid around 20K for it.

Eagerly waiting for the pictures on the spirited White Linea now. :D

Sorry for the disappointment, Hehe. Until the second service, there will only be insignificant things like this. Not really long left for 15k, just 800 km. Should be gobbled up in the next few weeks.

You're always busy doing roadtrips H4wk! We could do the photo/videoshoot this weekend. Over to SMS for further planning *winks*.

Thanks a lot Scofield , you were the one who originally planted this idea in my head long, long back. You haven't got this done yet on your 90HP??

Thanks for the 60k service update. How is the experience with the RD box so far?

Hey I got the same thing done during my first year of ownership with few italian stickers.

RD box has been a a very good companion,have done ECU scans upteen times but never an error is reported.

Planning to drive down to Bangalore in October to meet my brother - will let you know the plan, lets catch up.

I know I am super-late to the party (could not help it, I just joined T-BHP :p), nevertheless, heartiest congratulations on getting the Italian heartthrob home. I have been actively following the thread ever since you wrote the first post and I must say this: Hats off to your diligence in making an already beautiful car even more gorgeous. Most mods of this level generally end up reserving themselves a seat in the Weird and Wacky mods thread; however, the level of skill shown by you (and the 3M guys, of course) deserves considerable respect.

As the company famously quotes, with a Fiat, admiration is guaranteed. You have just taken it two steps further clap:

An update in the pipeline (not completed yet):

I recently found out from the local 3M store I frequent, that they now have matt black vinyls. The Red Rocket's front and rear bumper work mimicking the Abarth Punto Evo's black portions are now done in faux CF vinyl. I will be stripping that off and repeating the work, this time with matt black vinyl :D. That will give a more original look than CF vinyl.

Also, special thanks to Eminenttismo and hemanth.anand for pointing out the flawed shape of the rear Abarth-look CF work. I will correct the shape and ensure 100% resemblance when I get the work done with 3M matt black vinyls.

Thanks a lot for the kind comments mohitk1993. Really glad to know you enjoyed following the thread even before you joined here. The car has been decked up to this level, only thanks to the continuous feedback and suggestions by fellow members here. It wouldn't have been possible without that :). Please continue to pour in any suggestions, feedback and criticism whenever you feel like doing so.