News April 13 2007

Fiat relaunches Punto Abarth at Geneva

Fiat relaunched one of the car industry’s legendary performance and sporting car marques at the Geneva show this month when it took the wraps off the Fiat Punto Abarth, the first of a new range of high performance and sporting Fiats, as well performance and sporting kits for the Fiat range.

“This is an enormously exciting development for Fiat,” says David Stone, General Manager for Fiat cars in Australia. “It will provide Fiat with a unique performance brand to sit alongside the existing range, giving them a sharper, even more exciting edge. Unlike other artificially created performance brands, Abarth comes with a real heritage and reputation. Here in Australia, its products are fondly remembered by enthusiasts and much sought-after by performance car collectors. We are looking keenly at how the new Abarth range, both the Abarth models and the performance and styling kits, can become part of our range.”

Founded in 1947 by Carlo Abarth, the Abarth company produced classic sporting versions of key Fiat models and ran racing teams that were dominant forces on both the race track and on rally stages. The famous scorpion badge was chosen as a clear indication of what Abarth was all about – small cars with a big sting in the tail!

Luca de Meo, Managing Director of Fiat’s car division, has decided that Abarth must be much more than a badge attached to the range topping version of each model in the Fiat range. The new Abarth division of the company will run its own racing and rally teams, starting with the highly successful Fiat Punto S2000, which took the Italian and European Rally titles last year in its debut season.

The new division will also prepare racing and rally cars for customers in a wide range of series and one make championships. For road-car customers, Abarth will develop new models for the Fiat range, starting with the Fiat Punto Abarth, as well as developing performance and styling packages for the owners of existing Fiat products. Fiat has recently worked hard on building its own image through merchandise and clothing lines, and this will also be a key element in the plans for Abarth.

“The link with tradition is not just an idea, but tangible and concrete,” says Mr de Meo. “This is a real rebirth, that will start with the triumphant return of Abarth activities to the historical premises in Corso Marche, Turin, where the famous ‘Officine Abarth’ will be recreated to make real Abarth ‘scorpions’, that will sting the passion of thousands of motorists, with the taste of the challenge, speed and Italian styling!”

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The Punto Abarth

The first of the next generation of Fiat Abarth cars is the Punto Abarth, which is equipped with a 1.4 turbo petrol engine delivering 150 bhp at 5500 rpm, boosted to 155 bhp when 98 RON petrol is used.

A booster kit will shortly be available to boost output to 180 bhp (ie peak power twice that of the entry level Punto). This is a revival of a tradition from the past: for example, the Fiat 500 of 1958 delivered 13 bhp at 4000 rpm with a top speed of 85 km/h, while the Fiat 500 Abarth of the same year delivered 26bhp at 5000 rpm and a top speed of 118 km/h. The Punto Abarth aims to revive the feats of these entertaining performance cars, offering young drivers in particular an opportunity to enter the racing world in complete safety and at an accessible price.

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The Punto Abarth S2000

Abarth plans to repeat the stunning debut of this car last year as the Punto S2000, by entering the 2007 Italian Rally Championship with Giandomenico Basso and his navigator Mitia Dotta.

Davide Gatti, winner of the 2006 Fiat Abarth International Trophy, will compete at the wheel of an official Fiat Punto R3D with a diesel engine. On the international scene, the Punto Abarth S2000 will compete in the IRC (Intercontinental Rally Challenge) with drivers Andrea Navarra, his navigator Guido D’Amore, and young Umberto Scandola and Anton Alen. The Abarth & C. Spa racing team will be managed by Claudio Berro. Powered by a 2000 cc aspirated engine that delivers 270 bhp, with 4-wheel drive, the new Punto Abarth S2000 is heir to the version that took the 2006 Italian Rally Championship title with Paolo

Andreucci and Anna Andreussi, winning 7 of the 11 races on the programme. Giandomenico Basso and Mitia Dotta won the European title and the International Rally Challenge.

Since its debut last season, the racing version has proved unbeatable, whatever the terrain. The 15 cars built so far have been ordered by several racing stables in Europe and elsewhere, to compete in domestic and international rallies. The new Abarth & C. company boasts a staff with a great deal of experience in motorsports: a total of 113 experts, 26 in the engineering field, 43 on the manufacturing side and 9 dedicated to racing.

© italiancar.net 13/4/07