Abarth Coupe coming

The Abarth Coupe - a reality within 2 years

Abarth – Fiat’s ‘Hot’ division – is planning its first stand-alone car since becoming part of Fiat 40 years ago – The Abarth Coupe.

For any but the oldest of our readers – even me included – Abarth is simply the ‘Hot’ Fiat. The badge that denotes the fastest of Fiat’s offerings. But Abarth isn’t a made-up division of Fiat in the way ‘R’ is for VW or ‘M’ for BMW. It was, for the first two decades of its existence, an independent car maker and tuner, renowned for its hillcimbing and sports cars and modifications to cars like – Fiat.

But Fiat swallowed Abarth at the start of the ’70s, signalling the end of the independent Abarth car. Instead the Abarth badge got attached to fast Fiats and Lancias and slowly got devalued until it was nothing more than a badge. That has changed more recently with some proper hot Fiats – such as the Abarth 500C – getting the real Abarth treatment and now we’re going back to the future with the revelation that Abarth are planning a  stand-alone model for the first time in 40 years.

The plan seems to be a 2 door coupe weighing in at less than 900kg but with 240bhp on tap. Which would make for a very fast Abarth indeed. And it’s not just idle speculation either. Abarth’s sales and marketing boss Antonino Labate told Autocar that “…[Abarth] is doing so well we will definitely bring our own standalone Abarth coupe model to market within the next two years”.

Should be interesting.