In general, I like small cars with surprisingly powerful engines and bigger than normal tires and brakes. Mini Coopers, Fiesta STs and GTIs all tend to be a hoot to drive even at less than insane speeds. Chrysler has some good and not so good history in the segment with the old Neon SRT4 and the Caliber SRT4. Now that the team at Auburn Hills are part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, they are offering up the Fiat 500 Abarth. Where will it fall on the spectrum?
The Abarth and Fiat 500 brands both have long and storied histories in Europe. After motorsports came back to life as Europe recovered from the second world war, Carlo Abarth launched his eponymous racing team and sports car company in 1949. By 1951, Abarth began an association with Fiat that continues to this day. The original Fiat 500 or Cinquecento debuted in 1957 and the iconic design of that car inspired the reborn edition 50 years later. By the early 1960s, Abarth was to the Fiat 500 as John Cooper was to the Mini in England and in 1971, Fiat bought up Abarth and made it an official part of the family.
Just as the reborn 21st century Minis took design inspiration from their ancestors while getting significantly larger, so too did the 500. However, like its British counterpart, the 500 still remains a tiny car by modern standards. The 500 is a nominal four-seater, but just barely. The back seat is strictly for kids or less lanky adults. It’s better to consider this a two-seater runabout with a nicely upholstered parcel shelf.
Also like Mini, Fiat has taken the basic look and feel of its small car and stretched and bloated it into a number of alternate body styles in the hopes of attracting most customers with a similar mixed degree of aesthetic success. From an outright performance perspective the top-end 500 Abarth is comparable to Mini’s mid-range Cooper S. The basic 500 offers two variants of Fiat’s 1.4-liter MultiAir four-cylinder engine at 101-horsepower and 135-horsepower, the latter variant enhanced by a turbocharger.
In proper Italian fashion, the Abarth engine features a red crackle finish on the valve cover
The Abarth gets a less restrictive intake system that helps bring total output up to 160-hp and 170 lb.-ft. of torque when paired with the standard five-speed manual gearbox. My tester had the optional six-speed automatic that loses 3-hp but gains 13 lb.-ft. for a total of 183 from 2,400-4,000 rpm. The newest Mini Cooper S generates a more ample 189-hp and 207 lb.-ft. of torque but it also weighs 270-pounds more than the Abarth. Nonetheless, the Cooper S still has an advantage with 14.7 pounds/hp vs 15.7 pounds/hp for the Fiat. Perhaps more importantly, the direct-injected engine in the Mini has a big advantage in low-end torque, hitting its 207 lb.-ft. peak at just 1,250 rpm.
I haven’t tried the latest Mini yet, but the automatic Abarth just didn’t feel as strong as the numbers imply and certainly not as strong as Minis I’ve driven in the past. Frankly, the Abarth felt a bit weak off the line, even when the Sport mode was engaged. Not having tried a manual gearbox Abarth, I can’t say if the problem here a laggy turbo setup or a torque converter sapping the early life out the powerplant. Whatever the root cause, a car that I had fully expected to be another of these roadgoing go-karts came across as somewhat underwhelming. My disappointment was further amplified by the noise generated by the Abarth’s exhaust system. Twisting the key ignites a serious racket that promises far more than it delivers.
Given the comparatively low mass of the 500, the dynamic qualities were also a bit underwhelming. From Minis to Ford Fiestas to Honda Fits, there are plenty of small cars that feel light on their feet, nimble and tossable at all times. By contrast, the 500 came across as somewhat leaden, not really heavy, just not especially responsive. It was missing the liveliness that it’s diminutive size and utter Italianness seemed to promise the first time I walked up to it. Flung aggressively into corners, the Abarth understeers resolutely and the steering doesn’t have much feel to it.
In the cabin, the 500 has some quirky ergonomics, although it’s not quite as silly as Minis have been over the years. The gauges sit directly in front of the driver where they belong with arcing tach and temperature gauges to the left and fuel and performances gauges to the right of a central LCD that can be toggled through multiple displays including speedometer, trip computer, accelerometer and various other settings. A small auxiliary boost gauge hangs off to the left of the main pod.
A single-DIN head unit sits in the center of the dash but instead of the rotary knobs for the volume and tuner, push buttons are used. Hidden auxiliary audio controls can be felt on the back side of the thick-rimmed leather-wrapped steering wheel. The front seats are more supportive than those in the Dodge Dart, but like the Dart they are hinged at the front, and the cushions seem to be angled down, eliminating any thigh support. Due to the limited space, the central armrests are mounted on the inboard side of the seat backs. When lowered into position, they block easy access to the seatbelt buckle so you have to raise them before latching or releasing the belts.
Below the radio is the Sport mode button, which switches to a more aggressive throttle map and enables rev-matches downshifts, fuel-cut on the upshifts, brake assist downshifts and corner gear hold. The effect on the transmission behavior is noticeable and definitely helps the performance feel, although the change to the engine response was less notable. Nonetheless I ended up engaging sport mode most of the time.
If you are working your way down the options list for the 500 Abarth, you’ll find several pricey options that you should think twice about selecting them. First up is the Beats audio package. While the Beats brand has gained a surprising degree of popularity over the past nine years, none of their products has been particularly renowned for providing high fidelity audio and that trend continues in this car. Even sitting in the driveway with the engine off, the Beats system doesn’t say all that great with muddy midrange. With the engine running, the loud exhaust of the Abarth is always intrusive at best and the Beats system is simply overwhelmed when trying to reproduce music. Take the $900 that Fiat charges and go over to an independent car audio shop or even Best Buy and they can probably put together a better sounding system for you.
Instead of $600 for the optional TomTom navigation, customers would be better served by a good mount for their smartphone
The second option to pass on is the TomTom navigation system. Unlike many Chrysler products that offer integrated navigation systems in the vehicle center stack with the maps provided by Garmin, this is basically an off-the-shelf old-school navigation unit with a dock that has been permanently mounted on top of the dash to the right of the instrument cluster. The good part is you can pop the TomTom out of the dock when you park the car and take it with you to find your way around town.
Unfortunately, the unit has an unimpressive 4.3 screen and a thick and bulky body. Odds are if you can afford to buy this car, you probably already have a far more capable navigation system in your pocket in the form of a smartphone. Most phones have bigger screens, slimmer profiles and with their ubiquitous internet connections, they can find far more points of interest and the maps stay up to date in real time. Skip the $600 for this TomTom and drop $25-50 on a good dock for your phone and just use that.
You may get the impression from reading this review that I hated the Fiat 500 Abarth. That would be too harsh a description. I think it’s kind of cool looking and the manual gearbox variant may be a bit more lively off the line than the automatic. It’s just that I was expecting something more, especially at an as tested price of $28,295. For that price you can get a nicely equipped Mini Cooper S or Fiesta ST that feel more fun to drive. I think some retuning powertrain and suspension could inject some more life into the Abarth, but that’s up to Fiat to accomplish. In the meantime, I’ll look elsewhere.
Click here for full specs of the 2015 Fiat 500 Abarth
