At least that's what I thought when Fiat contacted me some weeks back to take their latest addition to their showroom out for a test drive.

After all these years, the word Evo has become synonymous with a certain brand in particular - Mitsubishi. So you'd be forgiven to think that the Fiat Punto Evo was the Italian brand's formal war cry into the more performance area of the market is currently occupied by another Italian, the Alfa Romeo MiTo.

Far from it, as I would embarrassingly find out a few nights before my date with the Punto.

With the awkward conversation I could be having with the Marketing staff playing on loop in my head, I received the car with much anticipation, having learnt about some of the systems Fiat has throw into the car to make it a much greener vehicle than its colour might suggest.

Exterior

Fiat has made some changes to the car, but you've got to keep a keen eye to list them down without comparing it with the previous car.

That's because they've decided to keep with the silhouette of the previous car. Designed by Italdesign-Guigario in partnership with Centro Stile Fiat, Fiat's very own skunkworks design crew, the shape can be described as pleasant on the eyes.

Keeping its clean and relatively handsome outlook, the Punto has its front fascia revised to incorporate a new front bumper section that does away with the rectangular grill from the last car and incorporates a rather tiny slit of a grill. What dominates the front however is the gaping yaw forced wide by the black plastic stretched across the length of one headlight to the other - adding just a dab of aggressiveness.

The redesigned badge of Fiat, backed in red, sits less prominently in the middle of a thin chrome strip and works very well to blend into the car rather than interrupt the calm and collected design philosophy.

At the rear, the Evo gets a brand new tail light that has been blacked out at the edges and clear coloured in sections.

Apart from the brand new bumper at the rear that see's the same treatment as the front (with the plastic insert), what I'm very pleased to see is the red Fiat logo sitting prominently above the re-designed Punto nomenclature. I don't normally get excited by red coloured logos but this one actually is functional.