Italian cars, written about properly

italiancar.net has covered Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Fiat, Abarth, Lancia and Maserati since 2003. We are rebuilding the archive — carefully, and with the research done again from scratch.

Currently live: Abarth

We are starting with the scorpion. Carlo Abarth's operation is the most instructive story in post-war Italian motoring — a firm that funded a serious racing programme by selling exhaust pipes, and turned the cheapest cars in Italy into things that genuinely frightened the establishment.

• Abarth: the marque

  Carlo Abarth, the scorpion badge, the exhaust business that paid for the racing, and the Fiat takeover.

• Model index

  What the numbers and suffixes actually mean — and why "an Abarth" can mean four very different things.

• Abarth 595

  The Fiat 500 made genuinely quick. Decoding 595, 695 and SS, plus what to check before buying.

• 750 Zagato

  The double-bubble roof, and the engineering reason it exists.

• 850 GT

  Coachbuilt coupés in the 850 class, and how they differ from the racing TC.

• Abarth Spyders

  The open cars — and an honest account of why their history is so hard to establish.

What we are doing here

This site existed for two decades as an e-zine covering Italian marques, with a substantial reference section on individual models. It changed hands, drifted, and eventually lapsed.

We are rebuilding it. That means writing the material again rather than reposting what was here before — the original authors own their work, and it would not be right to publish it under new ownership. Where the old site had a page on a subject, we research the subject afresh.

It also means being candid about uncertainty. Italian small-manufacturer records from the 1950s and 60s are incomplete, and period specifications were frequently inconsistent. Where we are not confident, we say so rather than repeating a figure because three other websites also repeat it.

Coming next

The reference sections on Alfa Romeo (147, 156, 159, GT, GTV, Brera, Spider, 166), Ferrari (F430, 599 GTB, Scaglietti, Superamerica) and Fiat (Grande Punto, Panda) are being rewritten and will go live progressively.