Carlo Abarth establishes his tuning company in Turin in the year 1949. At the beginning he specialized in Fiats, but eventually built cars that were definitely separate models in their own right. By the early 1960s, his firm was turning out approximately 3000cars a year and employed more than 350 people, which put it on similar scales to such respected and well loved firms such as Coopers in the United Kingdom. One of the staple products of his impressive little operation was the 1958 Fiat 500, from which he managed to produce amazing performance improvements. These were achieved by increasing the capacity of the little twin, using a bigger carburetor and working on the valves. Abarth was able to tease nearly 40bhp form the most highly tuned SS versions of the vehicles. This meant that the Abrath Fiat 500 could manage almost 90mph (144km/h). The standard, factory, 21 bhp Fiat 500 could only ever hope to struggle to about 55 mph (88km/h), a figure which came via some very breathless acceleration.
It has an engine of ‘’Fiat twin air cooled’’ with 539cc. The handling and braking of the Abrath were dramatically up rated to make the tiny, sexy car bedecked with strips and flared wheel arches into the ultimate boy racer’s giant killer. Production of the Abrath Fiat 500 ended in 1971, and fiat took the company over in 1973, although the name still lives on as a high performance badge on today’s smaller Fiats.
