Fiat Stilo 2.4 20v

...2002, I obtained a 2.4 Fiat Stilo Abarth from my local dealership on a 42-month personal contract plan. Over and above the already extensive specification, it also came with leather, comfort pack and 17" alloys. In the intervening period, the car has paid 13 separate visits to the dealership, the longest consecutive period in the workshop being six weeks. For a third of my term of ownership, I have either been driving a low-specification courtesy ...
...the AA out under my Fiat cover on the basis of a breakdown to obtain a courtesy car. The AA do not take kindly to this as their remit is to provide a rescue and relay service to motorists who are genuinely stranded in an immobilised vehicle, not one which is faulty but technically capable of starting and being driven.

I have petitioned for the rejection of the Stilo on the basis that it is not fit for purpose. The request has been ... more

In July 2002, I obtained a 2.4 Fiat Stilo Abarth from my local dealership on a 42-month personal contract plan. Over and above the already extensive specification, it also came with leather, comfort pack and 17" alloys. In the intervening period, the car has paid 13 separate visits to the dealership, the longest consecutive period in the workshop being six weeks. For a third of my term of ownership, I have either been driving a low-specification courtesy car or I have had no car at all. In the first 8 weeks of this year, the vehicle went back to the dealership no fewer than 8 times - I am almost tempted to ask for my own coffee mug in the Service Department.

The list of defects to date include:

Intermittent failure of Climate Control
Intermittent failure of stereo system
Stereo speakers faulty
CD memory failure
Rain sensor/wiper failure
Rubbing strip adrift of offside door panel
Volumetric sensor failure activating alarm
Tilt sensor failure activating alarm
Boot alarm sensor failure
Intermittent SatNav failure (ongoing)
SatNav screeching (ongoing)
SatNav remaining switched on after deactivation (ongoing)
SIM card holder snapped off in ConnectNav+ unit
Wing mirrors spontaneously self-adjusting
Selespeed gearbox failure (ongoing)
Central locking failure (leaving me trapped inside the vehicle)
Intermittent loss of power in low gears
Intermittent stalling response in 2nd gear
Vehicle rocking back and forth in reverse gear
Rear seatbelt pretensioner locked out at full tension - unable to release
Memory seat failure - returning to position when rear passengers entering or exiting the vehicle
Immobiliser failure
Offside door handle sticking - unable to shut door from inside the vehicle
Complete crash of electrical system - engine cut out and unable to restart

A fairly comprehensive list of failures, I'm sure you'll agree, many of them safety-related. When the dealership is on occasion unable to provide a replacement vehicle, they recommend I call the AA out under my Fiat cover on the basis of a breakdown to obtain a courtesy car. The AA do not take kindly to this as their remit is to provide a rescue and relay service to motorists who are genuinely stranded in an immobilised vehicle, not one which is faulty but technically capable of starting and being driven.

I have petitioned for the rejection of the Stilo on the basis that it is not fit for purpose. The request has been denied on the premise that Fiat & the dealership are technically performing according to the conditions of the contract by repairing the vehicle under warranty. This is not, in fact, the case as many of the problems, including failure of the semi-automatic gearbox, are either recurring or still unresolved. To date, the dealership has incurred over £4,000 in parts and courtesy car hire, not including associated labour costs and workshop time which cannot be billed back to Fiat. The solution proposed by the dealership was to reach a plateau of continuous functionality before negotiating some kind of "goodwill gesture" for my "inconvenience". However, it is patently obvious that sustained functionality is not achievable and I have found the dealership's customer interface to be diligent but insipid and ineffectual in fighting my corner.

I am at the point where I am no longer interested in the minutiae of the failures - the vehicle is patently a lemon and Fiat should have been focusing on a course of action to address customer satisfaction issues rather than tinkering with the car on a weekly basis. I was eminently patient, tolerant and reasonable throughout the whole process but eventually started to reach the end of my magnanimity and understanding. The issue was exacerbated from purely automotive to emotive as every time I looked at the vehicle, it inspired nothing but irritation, exasperation and regret.

I phoned Parker's legal hotline to enquire what an appropriate course of action might be and, having prefixed the conversation with "I bought a FIat Stilo last year...." I got no further with my sentence when the representative on the other end of the line replied "Oh, bad luck". They have advised that I invoke legal proceedings and I have relayed this to Fiat who simply reminded me of my contractual obligation to keep up the finance payments.

I have unsuccessfully requested a meeting on several occasions with Fiat's Zone Manager, who is responsible for the final decision on the fate of the vehicle and my finance agreement. Fiat cannot have it both ways: either the level of defects on my car is genuinely exceptional, in which case the vehicle should have been replaced long before now or the contract terminated, or the level of defects is acceptable within Fiat's parameters of operation, which I can hardly believe to be true.

The saga is now nearing its conclusion. Interestingly, the new Fiat Stilos in production today have a completely different wiring loom, which suggests to me that the original one must have had a generic fault to revise the product so soon after launch.

The dealership has agreed to let me exchange the Stilo for another horse from the same stable. This involves reaching a settlement figure on my Stilo and Fiat contributing some kind of financial support. I have been advised by the Dealership off the record not to accept another Stilo (since it is "trying to be too clever for its own good") but to look at an Alfa 147 instead. However, I have now been waiting over a month for a 2.0 Selespeed vehicle to materialise for a test drive and the market appears to be tight at the moment.

UPDATE: 19/11/2003 - After writing directly to the Managing Director of Fiat Auto UK, an agreement was reached that I could reject the car and cancel the contract. I also received 3 months' instalments as a refund, given that the car had been off the road for a total of over three months during my ownership. The MD was profusely apologetic and agreed that my experience was totally unacceptable. The dealership, Alan Gibson, was ungracious and evidently displeased that I eventually won the right to hand back the car, even though Fiat Auto UK absorbed the cost. I now have a company car - a Golf TDI - and I'm hoping that its reliability matches VW's promises!  

...less