report by Yoshihiro Koyama

When I first thought about purchasing a car, Italian cars weren't an option in the first place, but one of my collegue at work happened to be the chairman of Japan Cinquecento Users Group and introduced me a maintenance guy who used to work for a long time in Torino, and that gave me a kick to seriously consider becoming an Italian car owner.

Talking about a popularity of Punto in Japan...

Although Punto Mk-I has been an European car of the year, it never got a popular car in Japan. However, FIAT Japan has developed a good advertisement for Mk-II and Punto is getting more popular (still not a lot).
In Japan, there are only three models released from FIAT Japan; ELX, HLX, and HGT. They sell 5-door ELX (CVT only), 5-door HLX (also CVT only), and HGT (5MT only). No 3-door model with 1.3L engine plus 6MT are available (except for third-party importers). That's basically why I chose HGT (where in the world does the man drive AT cars?).