Abarth

Carlo Abarth, following a career racing motorcycles and cars, formed Abarth & C in Bologna on 31 March 1949, Carlo’s astrological sign, Scorpio, was chosen as the company logo. The first vehicle produced was the 204 A Roadster, based on the FIAT 1100. It immediately won the 1100 Sport Championship as well as Formula 2. Alongside racing, the company started to produce tuning kits that improved performance, power and speed of standard vehicles. In just a few years, Abarth & C. had 375 employees and produced around 300,000 exhaust systems a year.

Carlo sold Abarth to Fiat on 31 July 1971.  Abarth became the Fiat Group’s racing department, preparing rally cars, including the Fiat 124 Abarth Rally and the 131 Abarth. Lancia joined the Fiat stable in 1978 and Abarth played a role in their domination of Rally into the 1980’s. On 1 October 1981 Abarth was mothballed, only to emerge in 2007 to produce race inspired versions of the Fiat stable including the Grande Punto, the 124 spider and the hugely successful Fiat 500.

 

 

Abarth 595

Abarth make a performance version of the Fiat 500, this is about as much fun as you can have on 4 wheels. The 1.4 litre petrol T-Jet engine paired to an automatic gearbox, only a single Abarth is now on the Scheme (April 2022), the 165hp Truismo  (0-62 mph in 7.3 seconds) which can return respectable 41.5 miles per gallon. This is the most thrills available on the Motability Scheme, there is not a lot of room for the family however. Sadly prices increased by £800 for Q2 2022, the advance Payment is now £1495 (£332 wpms).