Spied in Brazil - Fiat extends Palio's life with a facelift

As far as India is concerned, the Fiat Palio is long gone, but in Brazil the hatchback is still vying to run for a few more years before it finally hangs up its boots. The old Palio christened as Fire still sells alongside the New Palio.

Autossegredos.com.br's reader Marlos Ney Vidal has spotted this camouflaged test mule of the Fiat Palio facelift in Brazil. Under the thick camouflage, nothing seems to have really changed except for the front grille which now features two horizontal slats instead of the current car's single chrome slat.

While the exterior continues almost unchanged, the interior is expected to be completely different from the current car. Autossegredos.com.br reports that the new interior will borrow a lot of components from the Fiat Siena EL sedan.

This will be the fourth restyling exercise of the Fiat Palio and the company will most probably retain the hatchback's 1.0 litre flex fuel engine which develops 75bhp and 97 Nm of torque while running on Ethanol. The engine is mated to a 5-speed manual transmission.

The Fiat Palio facelift is expected to be launched by the end of this year or early next year. The current version has a starting price of 24,270 Reals (around Rs. 6.45 lakhs). The new car is expected to command a slight premium for the new interiors.

[Source: Autossegredos.com.br]