bro ...
it is nothing to do with popularity or mlaysian being a lazy bum wanna drive an auto tranny altezza, i think it is because of the importer's thend of bringing an auto altezza to malaysia
another thing is that, my importer friend used to tell me than it is difficult for them to find a manual tranny altezza even in japan, may be those japanese who originaly buy manual tranny altezza keep the car for future mods
by the way, in KL and as far as im concerned, there are only handful of manual tranny alktezza