Road Test
Fiat Punto Abarth
Test date 01 October 2008
Price as tested £13,500
For Styling, sweet engine, interior upgrades, decent handling, value
AgainstArtificial steering feel, some interior finish looks cheap, firm ride
Carlo Abarth, an Austrian, began tuning small Fiats in 1949. His Scorpio birth sign provided inspiration for the famous arthropod logo.
Success led to Abarth developing models of his own before Fiat bought the company in 1971. Despite continued rally success, the brand gradually withered, becoming attached to often undeserving road cars.
Fiat has not sold a serious hot hatchback for a long, long time, unless you count the Uno Turbo or, before that, the 127 1300 GT. There have been Punto Sportings and HGTs, of course, but they weren’t all that sporting, which is why they’re a rare sight.
But otherwise Fiat has chosen to keep out of this market, which is tiny in homeland Italy anyway. Not that this car is a Fiat, officially at least; the mother company has chosen to revive the Abarth tuning name to market its small fast cars, and sell crated tuning kits and some surprisingly tempting merchandise.
Abarth has its own headquarters, its own engineering department, a race programme and a dealer network.
But this car is, of course, a Fiat Punto with a turbocharged, 153bhp 1.4 T-Jet petrol engine, some fetching war paint and an upgraded chassis that includes a clever ESP system to preserve its manners at the limit.
The original Abarths were incredibly successful on the track but less so on the road. If Fiat is as serious as we think it is about revitalising the brand, this Punto needs to be nothing short of sensational.
Your Say
Comments: 4 Join the discussion