Abarth New car showroom

Founder Karl Abarth spent time working for Porsche’s design department and was also the sporting director for Cisitalia before launching Abarth & Co. in 1949. At first Abarth’s main focus was after-market products for production cars but soon after the liquidation of Cisitalia, he took ownership of a number of cars. Then, in 1952 Abarth began its long running relationship with Fiat when the Abarth 1500 Biposto was produced using Fiat mechanicals. Abarth’s partnership with Fiat proved to be lucrative when the Fiat 500 Abarth was released in 1958 and broke six international records that same year. Eventually, Abarth was sold to Fiat and took over the company’s racing department. After 1981, Abarth was officially no more, although Fiat did still use the name occasionally to market performance vehicles. In 2007 the brand was reborn as Abarth & Co. S.p.a, and is responsible for the brand’s high-performance variants of the 500 and 124 Spider.