Look at the Final Results chart; this was a tough call. For one thing, the handicaps of price are not easily resolved because the two cars hit from different tees. The Fiat 500 starts as a $16,200 sorority taxi and gets about $9000 in extra piss and vinegar. A base, 121-hp Mini Cooper starts at $20,200—$4000 above the base Fiat and only $2500 below an Abarth. A John Cooper Works starts $7900 higher than the Abarth before options. How do you juggle the money question?
It’d be easier if the Abarth wasn’t such a hoot. In some places where the basic 500 face-plants—its rolly dynamics, pokey acceleration, flabby seats, and wobbly shifter—the Abarth stands up. Details were sweated. Dullness was carefully expunged. In many ways, the Abarth recalls the old SRT-tuned Neon, a clueless rental unit made mean—and wholly credible—by people intent on creating a full experience.
How? Well, for starters, the Abarth sounds venomous. Many will be sold at the first turn of the key. Here is a Latin songstress in a class of droners that includes the Mini. Italian cars (even those made in Mexico with engines from Michigan) should sound Italian, and this one does.
Also, the Abarth goes. We’re not talking empirical acceleration; a zip-to-60-mph time of 6.9 seconds doesn’t exactly stop our presses, especially when compared with almost anything except the 10-second Fiat 500. No, the Abarth channels its joy in third-to-second gear drops, when the little 1.4 surfs a lumpy, surging wave of turbo torque.
Or don’t bother shifting because the 1.4 often will dig itself out of a pit with surprising muscle. Around town, it easily jumps Civics and Camrys at stoplights and wedges itself through mouse holes in traffic with a bellicose blat from its twin pipes.
While its steering feels coldly embalmed compared with the superb Mini’s, the Abarth changes direction faster than the Italian parliament and shows ride poise over swells and dugouts, despite the car’s runty wheelbase. Lacking a limited-slip differential, this Fiat will smoke a wheel in a turn, and the remote steering keeps you from getting too friendly with the car’s cornering limits.
The deeply scalloped, one-piece buckets are better padded and easier to get comfortable in than the Mini’s stiff chairs. Fancier fabrics and treatments and Abarth scorpions abound inside and out (the car doesn’t have a Fiat logo anywhere on it). And the five-speed shifter feels tighter in its gates than the base 500’s.
Indeed, if you keep your Abarth in the city for brief, highly entertaining trips, you may never find its weaknesses. They include the basic ergonomic oddness of the 500, which carries over unalloyed. This is a car that fits only those whose arms and legs are the same length. The buckets sit high off the floor like bar stools, so you step down onto the pedals at ankle-twisting angles. Most drivers must straight-arm the wheel and shifter, while their legs splay outward. This car needs a telescoping column like soup needs a spoon.
A certain featherlight, tin-can feel conspires with tufts of bunched seat fabric and exposed glue to raise doubts about build quality. The Abarth returned better fuel economy (25 mpg), but a 10.6-gallon tank means you’re still stopping often.
And yet, the notebook, acknowledging that the Abarth is basically 1.27 tons of fun, says, “I’m not sure you need more car than this.”