Autocar - First for car news and reviews

What is it?

The first car from the reborn Abarth brand.

In standard Abarth form it pumps out 155bhp at 5500rpm (redline 6500) with 152lb ft of torque at 5000 rpm. It'll cost around £16,000.

Splash out an extra £4000 and you can get a specially-appointed dealer to convert your car to Essesse (SS) spec, as tested here. That gives you 180bhp at 5750rpm, plus 200lb ft at 3000 rpm. With this, your Punto can hit 135mph, and sprint from 0-60mph in a shade under 7.5 seconds...Read the full article

what gets me about fiat is .always understate there cars, 0.60 times that is. have a not so old hgt punto and it is far nippier than the book states. Wonder what the real times are no doubt they tested the car with two people in it wieght in the boot tank full of the good stuff. Reckon they both will be atleast half a second faster. Naughty fiat.....................

I've currently got a Clio 182, the performance of the essesse version looks very similar but I used to own a Renault 5GT Turbo and loved the effortless turbo midrange acceleration, maybe this new Abarth version could make me switch from Renault to Fiat!!!

Bearing in mind this test was done in November, has anyone yet tried it on British roads?  I don't recall seeing a test on it yet?

Unlike so many Fiat's in the past, I hope this one does the job that it says on the tin.

I'm not really 'au fait' with new car prices, but is isn't £20k a bit steep for this level of performance?  I know figures aren't everything but surely it will never sell if there are competent equivalents available that are around the £15k mark.  And while the GP's styling has grown on me, I can't imagine the Abarth will be anywhere as raw as I want it to be...

 Isn't £20k getting into Focus ST/Astra VXR/Megane R26 territory?

Schwenck:

I'm not really 'au fait' with new car prices, but is isn't £20k a bit steep for this level of performance?  I know figures aren't everything but surely it will never sell if there are competent equivalents available that are around the £15k mark.

Exactly what I was thinking, Fiat has a reputation of building slightly flimsy but well spec'd cars at reasonable prices. £16k should be the asking price for the fire breathing model.

it's a conversion, not an off-the-shelf car. so you buy the Abarth, and a few years down-the-line, when you've paid it off or whatever, you spend the extra 4 grand on the car. 

Seren Kuhanandan:

it's a conversion, not an off-the-shelf car. so you buy the Abarth, and a few years down-the-line, when you've paid it off or whatever, you spend the extra 4 grand on the car. 

Sounds like an expensive way of doing things when you could just buy something quicker in the first place. 

Seren Kuhanandan:

Seren Kuhanandan wrote the following post at Apr 14, 2008 1:51 PM:

it's a conversion, not an off-the-shelf car. so you buy the Abarth, and a few years down-the-line, when you've paid it off or whatever, you spend the extra 4 grand on the car. 

 The Esseesse (SS) kit has to be fitted before 1 year / 12 000 miles. I have asked at my local Fiat Dealership and the Abarth comes out this september so I should think we can expect a UK road test pretty soon. There is no waiting list as of yet and Fiat have not announced where the 10 UK Abarth Dealerships will be located yet so all I can do is hope is that there will be one near Portsmouth.