The Abarth model index
Abarth's model naming is not a tidy hierarchy. It is the residue of two decades of tuning kits, coachbuilt specials, works racers and commercial opportunism — which is precisely why it needs explaining.
Most manufacturers have a model range. Abarth had something closer to a spectrum, running from a bolt-on exhaust at one end to a purpose-built competition car at the other, with a great many overlapping products in between. A car described as "an Abarth" might sit anywhere along it.
Getting this straight is not pedantry. It is the difference between the values at either end of a very wide market.
The four categories
1. Tuning kits and parts
The commercial foundation. Exhausts, manifolds, cylinder heads, camshafts and carburettor setups sold to owners of standard Fiats. A car fitted with these is a Fiat with Abarth parts — not an Abarth, however well done the work.
2. Factory conversions
Cars supplied by Fiat and comprehensively reworked by Abarth, sold as Abarth models. The 595 and 695 families sit here. This is the category where most of the value and most of the misdescription live.
3. Coachbuilt cars
Abarth mechanicals under bodies by Zagato, Allemano, Bertone and others. Lower volumes, higher period cost, and far more variation between individual cars. The 750 Zagato is the emblematic example.
4. Competition cars
Purpose-built racers and record cars, including the sports-prototypes that carried the marque into international sports car racing. Smallest numbers, highest values, most documentation required.
Reading the numbers
Abarth model designations generally refer to engine capacity, not to the donor car. A 750 has roughly 750cc; an 850 roughly 850cc; a 595 a little under 600cc. This is why the same base Fiat can appear under several different Abarth numbers — the number tracks what Abarth did to the engine, not what Fiat originally sold.
Common suffixes:
| SS | Higher-output specification within a given capacity class |
|---|---|
| TC | Turismo Competizione — touring competition specification |
| GT | Generally denotes a coachbuilt closed body rather than a converted saloon |
| Assetto Corsa | Racing setup — suspension, gearing and equipment for competition use |
| Zagato / Allemano / Bertone | The coachbuilder responsible for the body, not an Abarth specification |
The rear-engined Fiat family
The bulk of Abarth's road-car output derives from Fiat's rear-engined small cars — the 500, the 600 and their derivatives. Abarth worked this seam harder than anyone, extracting successively larger capacities and higher outputs from architecture never designed to accommodate either.
The 595 and 695 derive from the 500. The 750 and 850 families derive from the 600. Capacity increases came through boring and stroking, which is why the numbers climb well beyond anything Fiat offered.
The 850 TC in particular became a fixture of European saloon racing, and its silhouette — small, upright, engine lid propped defiantly open — is one of the enduring images of 1960s motorsport.
Guides on this site
Abarth 595
The 500-based cars, the SS specifications, and what to check before buying.
750 Zagato
The double-bubble coupé and why that roof exists.
850 GT
Coachbuilt Abarths in the 850 class.
Abarth Spyders
The open cars, and why they are so much harder to categorise.