And so, i've had the opportunity to drive the Fiat Grande Punto for an entire week. And if you, whoever you are, have stumbled over here while considering investing your hard earned cash into a Fiat Punto, please read on.

My thoughts of the punto might be slightly biased, but the reasons put forth should be valid, at least i reckon so.

People want to hear what's good about the car, and well, here's the good points.

The car looks good. With the Maserati style front end looking better on the Fiat than on the Maserati. One can hardly find anything to complain about that sleek, smooth curves that embodies this model. It looks great, and its eye catching. Internally though, it looks plastic as hell, cheap looking everything. At least its slightly more spacious than my Clio, slightly.

The engine capacity is small, so your road tax will be pretty cheap.

I actually cannot think of any more good points for that car, other than looking nice.

So, now for the bad.

The handling of the car is okay. I say okay because i usually just go straight or along a slightly curved road, no sharp hardcore turns involved, most of the time.

And when there are turns, spoilt by my Clio, i go thinking every car can corner at the speeds i usually do with that Clio. Imagine going for a U-turn at 30 and having your rear slide. Its exciting, and you get a sharper turn, but its also dangerous as hell.

I need something that sticks.

The gear shift mechanism for the (A) version just plainly and simply, sucks. Masquerading as a manual box, it requires a lot of getting used to since its not of the "drag down do D, drag up to P" type of tried and tested design.

Its a pain, and i'm told the car has to have the engine turned off in (N). Just following instructions, the car beeps and beeps when the engine is turned off making me feel that turning off in (N) wasn't such a good idea. Shutting down in (1) or (D) in everyone else's more familiar nomenclature shuts the car up.

All the beeps are irritating, you can actually set a very irritating beep to irritate you when you exceed a certain speed. I'm certain the beep can be set to 20km/h, someone just needs to try it out. You actually get the car to beep by doing a whole lot of shit, some which just doesn't make sense, some which actually do.

You can actually turn off the beep, but who knows what might that do. The car might explode.

Back to the gear box.

Because this is an old car, of probably about 4 years of age, the gearbox might be running a little funky. Like how the gear box would suddenly NOT engage, and beep coupled with a message "Gear not available, check handbook" would irritate you, hampering your ability to resolve the problem, but i reckon thats just the Italian style.

And so, it happens, the gear box WILL sometimes refuse to engage. Sometimes after a traffic light, sometimes just when one wants to go out and get supper, the gear wont engage. It might be due to lack of maintenance, but the fact that it can happen, is quite a scary thought, is it not?

In the space of 1 week, it happened more that 5 times to me.

At last, the final issue that bugs me, is that the car is underpowered. Overtaking is a pain. I bet the lack of engine output is a major boo-boo.

For almost 65k, there are better and more reliable cars out there.

65k can get you an impreza 2.0.

65k can get you a toyota altis.

65k can get you a renault clio with the exhaust mods and an ecu tune, and you'll still have cash for fuel for 3 months at least.

This punto was rented, so it might not have been the most perfect test car. Then in this case, the rental company should be blamed.

I can't name the rental company behind this, but i can tell you their rates.

$45 a day for the punto, i believe they're the only company renting out the car this cheap. Sucks anyway. And they rent out privately owned/registered cars. Illegal i tell you. And this particular car from this company is SO dirty that the girlfriend gets weird bugs biting her.

8667 is the 4 numbers i never wanna see again.