Today's the day to buy a Fiat 500 -- if your Internet connection and clicking reflexes are quick enough.

Gilt, a discount retail site, is selling three Fiat 500 models -- Cabriolet, Abarth and the discontinued Gucci edition -- for thousands off the MSRP, starting at noon EDT. Basically, if the cars aren't already sold out by the time you load this page, you'll pay Gilt $5,000 and then pay your Fiat dealer the remaining amount. Gilt then refunds the $5,000 and you're left with a 500C Lounge for just 10 grand, about $12,000 off the sticker. The Abarth and Gucci models have similar deals, the Gucci being paired with a trip to Italy. As of this morning, we did not have details on the total amount of required sales tax.

In 2010, Volkswagen sold three Jetta sedans on Gilt for $5,995 each, with the proceeds benefiting a charity. The cars sold out in seconds. For automakers, Gilt is a money-losing promotion that serves to get people to sign up with Gilt, which switches their available products every day. (It's also, as Car and Driver noted, cheaper for automakers than buying full-page ads in Sunday newspapers.) At Gilt, all of the sales are timed, and you can't buy more than five items at once. That's OK, because we didn't wake up today wanting hot-pink men's briefs.

Through June, Fiat sales have already eclipsed those from all of last year, at 20,706. Chrysler also is offering zero payments for 90 days on all Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models financed through Ally Financial, the once-failed, then bailed-out lender formerly known as GMAC. Fiat is also offering a special $199-per-month lease deal and zero percent APR for up to 60 months.

[Source: Gilt.]