2012 Fiat 500 Abarth
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Nobody asked me, but . . .
Fiat is back in the US market.
Wot???
You’re telling me I’m about a year late and a lire short? Forget about it . . .
That’s essentially that Fiat is asking Americans to do because, candidly, its first attempt at launching the Fiat 500 here didn’t work too well. I won’t go into all the gory details. Instead, let’s talk about the good news. At a recent press event in Los Angeles, Tim Kuniskis, Fiat’s US sales chief spoke about brand awareness. It was at 9 percent after six months. Then they introduced the somewhat controversial J Lo commercial, and that raised awareness to 30 percent in 60 days. Now it’s at 45 percent. That’s progress.
Progress has also come in the form of more sales outlets. For a long while it seemed as if you needed a special Guido decoder ring to find a Fiat dealer. I’m not even sure they had one at the Jersey shore. Now there are 142 stores and counting. More progress.
And despite all this, Fiat somehow managed to sell around 20, 000 500s it’s its first year on the market. In March 2012 Fiat expects to sell 700 500s in California alone. So the car has upward momentum.
2012 Fiat 500 Abarth
So what is a 500? It’s a retro model along the lines of the Mini. The original 500 was manufactured from 1957 to 1975. And some of these 10 footers (They were actually 2-feet longer than the original Mini) with their 479-cc, two-cylinder, air-cooled engines actually made it to America. A perfect city car, but not a great highway car. They were affectionately nicknamed Cinquecento (the Italian word for 500, which represented the engine displacement of 500 cc (okay, okay, actually 479 cc). The Fiat’s inline twin was mounted at the rear of the car (like the original VW Beetle) and produced 13 (correct) bhp. There was also a Sport version with the engine bored out to 499.5 cc, which resulted in a 50 percent increase in power up to 21 bhp. That 499.5 figure allowed the 500 to compete very successfully in the under 0.5-liter class, which was popular in European motor sports at the time.
Fiat Abarth Advertising 1965
In 2007, 50 years after the launch of the 500, Fiat introduced its spiritual successor with styling inspired by its predecessor. The new car is about two-feet longer, more than twice as heavy (2360 lb curb weight vs. 1100 lb) and is powered by a 1.4-liter, water-cooled, 4-cylinder producing 101 bhp and 98 lb-ft of torque. Like the New Beetle, this latest 500 has a bass ackwards configuration: front engine with front wheel drive. MSRPs start at $15,500 for the base 500 and range up to $23,500 for the limited edition Gucci Cabriolet, which, currently, is the fastest selling model.
The 500 also has its counterpart to the British tuner, John Cooper, for whom the hot version of the Mini is named: Carlo Abarth. As a kid growing up on Long Island in the 1960s, and with a love for all fast things with four wheels, I picked up the pronunciation of Abarth from more knowledgeable adult enthusiasts. They said A (long A)-barth. Now Chrysler-Fiat wants us to say R-bart. Adding insult to injury, they also use the first name Carlo went by before moving from his birthplace in Austria to Italy: Karl.
I’m sticking with Carlo Abarth, and since I’m writing this and not saying it, you can use whichever names and pronunciation you choose. But I’ll add an interesting bit of trivia here. Abarth and Ferdinand Porsche were friends in Austria. When Abarth moved permanently to Italy in 1934, he met Porsche’s son-in-law Anton Piech and married his secretary. And if you think Abarth is hard to pronounce correctly, try Piech. Hint: The German spelling has the two eyes of a happy face above the “e.”
Carlo Abarth and some of his bambinos, 1965. Obviously, they were the apple of his eye.
But I digress . . . Abarth used his automotive design and racing skills to great effect in Italy, creating very fast Fiats and other small cars that won hundreds of races. One of these was the Fiat 500 Abarth. And Fiat circa 2012 has added this model to its US lineup. This one has a 4-cylinder cranking out 160 Italian ponies and 170 lb-ft of torque, compliments of a turbocharger, twin intercoolers and Fiat’s MultiAir variable camshaft system.
True to the Abarth name, this latest version has a well tweaked chassis, including a 0.6-inch lower ride height, a 40-percent increase in roll stiffness front and rear, an increase in front negative camber, the addition of a rear anti-roll bar, unique valving for the Koni shocks, and fat 195/45R16 tires on 16 x 6.5-inch aluminum wheels. Fiat offers an even more aggressive 17-inch wheel/tire package, featuring 7-inch wide rims and 205/40R17 Pirelli P Zero Nero radials, which were fitted to the Abarth model I sampled.
Not enough? Abarth models are also equipped with larger brakes up front, semi-metallic linings and pads, stiffer cast iron rear control arms, equal-length half shafts, and a 10-perent faster steering gear. And did I mention the rear diffuser provides 20 lb of downforce? Well I just did!
The surface streets around Los Angeles airport where I was introduced to the 500 Abarth are not conducive to maximizing the aggressive acceleration and cornering grip this topolino of a Fiat is capable of producing. A race track would have been far more appropriate. Abarth engineer, Dan Fry, describes all these performance enhancements as making the 500 “wicked fast.” He’s not the first to have used the word wicked. Carlo, himself, coined the phrase “small but wicked” to describe his legendary 500 Abarth’s completion of a 7-day, 7-night marathon, which covered 18,186 km at an average speed of 108 km/hr, breaking six international records back in 1958.
Fiat 500 Abarth racing 1965
Suffice to say that the 500 Abarth, on road or track, exhibits enough grip, stick, turning, stopping and acceleration to provide excellent bang for the buck . . . or lire. In fact, Fiat refers to the 500 Abarth as the most affordable high performance car in America.
Crank the engine and it comes to life with a roarty bark that results in wide grins all around. And Fiat managed to meet noise drive-by (this is LA, remember) decibel limits without the need for a muffler. The catalyst and the turbo are all that’s required to meet the regs. Of course, the regs don’t require a burst of wide-open acceleration. Your neighbors will have a hard time figuring out how something so small can sound so big. It’s all part of the Abarth driving experience. Call it the mouse that roared. I call it fun.
Front-wheel-drive cars stuffed to the gunnels with power have tendencies toward understeer and torque steer. The Abarth has cures for both of these maladies: equal-length half shafts, along with a high-tech active locking differential that’s tied into the new three-mode electronic stability control program. And while understeer is the overriding handling characteristic, Dan Fry has seen to it that the Abarth can be coaxed into either predictably tail happy or neutral behavior—tossable is probably a better description—as a function of lift throttle or a quick jab of the brake pedal.
Base price for this well equipped 2012 Abarth model is an even $22,000. The one I drove rolled out the door at $26,050, which included a $700 destination charge and several options, only one of which I would have paid for: the wider wheels and Pirellis for $1000.
Following the successful Mini formula, several other versions of the 500 will be rolled out. Included are a larger, 4-door, 5-seat (It will have a real back seat.), high roof version, a 500 EV and a crossover that will offer all-wheel drive. There’s already a double bubble Zagato version of the 500 in Europe that could also find a home over here. But if I were the product planner, I’d be aiming more in the direction of the original Fiat Abarth 750 Zagato double bubble sports car. That design is a real keeper.
Fiat Abarth 750 GT Zagato
1959 Abarth Zagato
Abarth Zagato
Abarth Zagato
2012 Fiat 500 Abarth
2012 Fiat 500 Abarth
2012 Fiat 500 Abarth
2010 Fiat 500 Abarth
Fiat 500 Abarth
Nuova Fiat 500 1957
Fiat 500 L (Lusso) 1968-1972
Fiat 500 Topolino--manufactured from 1936-1955. In 1955 the rear-wheel drive Fiat 600 was launched and became the design basis for the new Fiat 500, the Nuova 500. The Nuova 500 is often thought, mistakenly, to be the only model 500 Fiat.
