Is it the tyres that make all the difference?

Probably not, even though the suspension layout is the same as in the case of the earlier Siena Weekend. The tyres do make a significant difference in the handling characteristics of the car. The tyres are not particularly low profile but the tread pattern corresponding to their all-weather billing makes the Adventure particularly impressive in the wet, something that I had a lot of occasion to learn about.
I would have like to see ABS on a vehicle powered by a near 100bhp engine and costing the other side of Rs 7 lakh but the Adventure comes with the same disc/drum combination that does duty on all its siblings. As in all the other cars of this generation like the Palio and the madeover Siena, the brake pedal has a squishy feeling on the Adventure too and becomes effective much lower than one would have liked or even expected it to. Not there is any problem with the braking though once you get used to it. The Adventure comes to a stop from 80kmph in 3.39s covering a distance of 35.84m in the process. The braking distances are in fact better than those of the Siena sedan and can be attributed to the Adventure having larger discs of 257mm up front (instead of 240mm) and bigger drums (228mm instead of 185mm) at the rear.

The car is stable under severe braking and gives the driver confidence to slam the brakes at 100kmph, coming to a dead stop in 4.09s and covering 56.22m in that time.

The ride quality is good and the Adventure just flies over bad road surfaces without bother, thanks no doubt to the 14-inch wheels and the Pirelli radials. The best part though is the ground clearance of the Adventure. In their first avatar in India, the Siena/Palio family had a ground clearance of just 140mm. That was woefully inadequate as we learnt on a drive to Delhi as the Siena’s sump guard took quite a battering. Our luck was not so good when we were driving the Siena Weekend back from Delhi and had to waste about an hour repairing a puncture in the sump. With the advent of the Palio, the ground clearance increased to 170mm and in the Adventure, it is a comfortable 190mm. The Siena Weekend was shod with 175/65 R14 tyres while the Palio Adventure moves on 175/80 R 14s. The higher profile tyres are the main factors for the increase in ground clearance and since the handling of the car does not suffer, so I must say that this is a good move on the part of Fiat. No more watching out for killer speed-breakers while driving in the city and leading to fearless driving on the highways - that is the boon that the Adventure brings.