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You’re looking at the first official photograph of the aggressive new Fiat 500 Abarth, one of the funkiest looking, and potentially most exciting, hot hatches arriving in 2008.
The 500 Abarth will debut at the Geneva motor show next month and is the second Fiat to be overhauled with the scorpion sports treatment as part of the Abarth brand’s recent revival.

Hot 500 gets 135bhp: still want that Mini Cooper?

Powered by a 1.4-litre turbo petrol engine, the new 500 Abarth develops...Read the full article

I must admit I'm a little dissapointed by the specs of this Arbarth. Epspecially one which is supposed to breath new life into the prestigious Italian marque. Granted 0-60 in 7seconds is pretty impressive for a hot hatch of this size. However if they had wanted to lift this baby Fiat from being a retrospective also ran, to a class leading prospect; perhaps they should have conisdered something more along the lines of 170bhp. This would have given a 0-60 closer 6.0 and if they'd have found this power by raising the rev limiter to around 7000rpm all the better.

The Mini Cooper S is there to be bettered, not matched; and by matching it's power the Arbarth could have turned it's significant weight advantage into something quite interesting indeed.

In the end the Arbarth seems like a plate of luke warm Bolognese, rather than the picante serving of Arribiata we'd all hoped.
 

The Abarth is motoring speak for "Wait for the SS". Given the chassis' humble origins anything over 150bhp could be "interesting" to control. A better idea would be to have stripped the 500 out and used this to give a better power to weight ratio, I mean, 170bhp in something this size? Mazda 2 - less is more?

The SS will have 160bhp- which in a car weighing around 1000kg should be plenty.....