New motor.............. Abarth 500!

[Leon-y-k]

Haha, yeah ill keep an eye out for your yellow Octy, I'm sure I've seen it before!

The turning circle is definitely wider than the 500 twinair I had before - had abit of a shock when I pulled onto my drive for the first time lol! It's not as bad as the Focus ST I had a couple of years ago tho. Oil tankers can turn tighter than those.....

I couldn't quite get on with that engine!! It sounded amazing, but then thats not really the best thing to compare it to when you drive a 2.0 tsi!

I do have a soft spot for the 100hp Panda! That also has a pretty wide turning circle haha same thing happened to me when trying to drive into the work shop, and I was thinking urrr that was slightly mis judged!

[grr666]

Ours is a 1.2 sport. 69bhp no turbo.

It would be great with more go.

[ickleginge]

Dr Zoidberg you are very right in some respects. On a more positive note at least Furbytom got rid of the Twin Air.

[Furbytom]

That car looks amazing!

I had to look it up and it aint that expensive in Sweden! Im even thinking of trading my fabia for one

But on the Swedish Fiat webpage they only list the "Fiat 500 Sport". Is that the Abarth?

What engine does the Abarth have? From what i could understand from the swedish webpage it has the same engine options as the regular 500, in that case how is it possible that it has a diffrent exhaust etc?

Abarth is a separate model line than Fiat. Only comes with a 1.4 turbo motor in 2 states of tune as someone said above. Get one you won't regret it!

For a 500, that actually looks fairly manly! What sort of man-maths led from a twinair to that though?!

The twinair was absolutely shocking on fuel compared to what it was meant to do. Official 68.9mpg.... I never averaged more than 41mpg over a tankful. Around town it was doing about 30mpg. Thought I might as well have the Abarth in that case! Loved the twinair was very good fun, seemed like a natural progression to try the abarth hehe!

[Dr Zoidberg]

I've seen that complaint about the twin air on Fiat Forum quite a lot. The 1.2 seems a better bet for sedate progress.

[Snowman89]

Abarth is a separate model line than Fiat. Only comes with a 1.4 turbo motor in 2 states of tune as someone said above. Get one you won't regret it!

The twinair was absolutely shocking on fuel compared to what it was meant to do. Official 68.9mpg.... I never averaged more than 41mpg over a tankful. Around town it was doing about 30mpg. Thought I might as well have the Abarth in that case! Loved the twinair was very good fun, seemed like a natural progression to try the abarth hehe!

Oh okey. Then its not avalible in Sweden :(

We only have the Fiat 500 "Style by Abarth" which is a Fiat 500 Twinair Sport afaik :(

Holy ****, just found it!

It costs like 2x Fabia 1.2 TSI elegance fully equipped

But it is indeed a nice car!

Edited 17 March, 2013 by Snowman89

[hertsnminds]

I knew someone who owned an early Abarth model, he loved the car but the service intervals were every 6 months or 6,000 miles is this still the case? I know Fiat used to fit small engine oil filters which needed replacing more often than those in other cars.

[Ootohere]

Unless changed 18,000 mile service intervals.

Is it £170 Road Tax?

(anyone in Scotland with an Abarth would maybe not be wanting it Serviced at a AC Fiat Dealership!)

george

[stokey]

I knew someone who owned an early Abarth model, he loved the car but the service intervals were every 6 months or 6,000 miles is this still the case? I know Fiat used to fit small engine oil filters which needed replacing more often than those in other cars.

I owned a launch model Abarth 500 and there was a lot of confusion regarding it's servicing requirements in the first year the consensus reached was that it needed servicing every 18000 miles BUT it needed an oil change service annually, both of which were dearer than Skoda servicing and my dealer was 120 miles away!

[Furbytom]

It is £170 road tax so abit more than the furby.

Servicing is every 18k or 2 years. That is the minimum requirement (for warranty etc) but the dealers recommend an oil/filter change every 12months which I guess is sensible anyhow. My dealer did an oil/filter change for me before I collected the car at no extra cost (despite it only having 1600 on the clock at 6mnths old) so I won't have anything to do for at least another year fingers crossed!

[sharkrider]

just out of interest I owned a fiat grande punto 1.9 deisel turbo (remapped at 4k) from new until 110k, and only serviced it every 18k, and it was fine, never used a drop of oil, never broke down. they spend a great deal of money on research, i would say 18k service intervals are fine... the cambelt on my punto was 90k too, and everyone (mostly fron VAG world) were like "it'll break! you MUST change it before 90k!!" of course I didn't, ran to 90k fine, belt looked like new when it was taken off....

enjoy your car

[Dr Zoidberg]

Talking of Fiat cam belts, my Bravo is due for it's fourth service in a month or so, so I rang a couple of dealers.

One said it needed doing, the other didn't so I checked with Fiat - they say 5 years or 72k for my engine, so not needed.

Interestingly the quote for a major service *with* the cam belt only came to £510 - not bad at all I though, given that some Skoda dealers quote around £400 just for the belt swap.

[sharkrider]

Talking of Fiat cam belts, my Bravo is due for it's fourth service in a month or so, so I rang a couple of dealers.

One said it needed doing, the other didn't so I checked with Fiat - they say 5 years or 72k for my engine, so not needed.

Interestingly the quote for a major service *with* the cam belt only came to £510 - not bad at all I though, given that some Skoda dealers quote around £400 just for the belt swap.

our skoda dealer has a pretty nifty cambelt deal on at the moment £250 any model (just cambelt, not water pump service ect ect )

[Dr Zoidberg]

That's a very fair price.

[robby]

I had 1 of these a few months ago - really fun to drive and when i fitted the TMC box (plug and play which upped power to approx 165bhp) it was great

Only thing i didn't like was the shift up light which couldn't be deactivated and was so distracting

Mine

[stokey]

I had 1 of these a few months ago - really fun to drive and when i fitted the TMC box (plug and play which upped power to approx 165bhp) it was great

Only thing i didn't like was the shift up light which couldn't be deactivated and was so distracting

Mine

That's just like mine looked except I had petal alloys and red leather seats...... Oh and a scorpion in the bonnet

[Furbytom]

I had 1 of these a few months ago - really fun to drive and when i fitted the TMC box (plug and play which upped power to approx 165bhp) it was great

Only thing i didn't like was the shift up light which couldn't be deactivated and was so distracting

Mine

Looks niiiice. Well tempted with a TMC. On mine I think you can deactivate the shift light in normal mode so it only works with the sport button pressed. I've only noticed it lighting up when you are virtually at the red-line tho!

[hertsnminds]

there was a lot of confusion regarding it's servicing requirements

That will probably be what the issue was and he was changing from a barchetta (same engine as a Punto HGT) which used the engine oil to lubricate the variator (variable valve timing mechanism). Made the engine sound like a diesel if oil was not kept fresh.

[Ootohere]

[Jabozuma]

It looks much better in Black with Red details!

[Dr Zoidberg]

I don't think there's a bad colour for the Abarth.

The grey is possibly the weakest but it still looks good.

[32KOFDATA]

I wouldn't say the grey is weakest - just different. Looks great with the rims and stickies like the pic below.

[Dr Zoidberg]

It still looks good, but with a free choice I can't imagine picking that over the other colours. Being a flat light grey it's just a little too close to primer for my liking.

[Furbytom]

The Campovolo grey really grows on you. Quite a rare colour too! It's also got abit of history behind it apparently:

Carlos Abarth got his first car. Looked to see what paint he could afford... turns out not too many colours were cheap... The Italian Navy however had a lot of Campovola Grey available because they decided not to use it on their Naval ships and so he took some off them. From then on its been a "classic abarth" colour it seems!

In bright light it looks almost white, in low light it's nearly gunmetal colour and sometimes looks like it has a blueish tinge.

[tonyfvrs]

You can't get a flat pack wardrobe in a Fiat 500 and do 0-60 in under 7 secs!