What I liked most about the Abarth 500e was parking. While theoretically this would have been more pleasant with a little more glass, because the view to the rear is quite poor in this Fiatje 500, which has been converted into a plug-in sports car. While, also that, this vehicle is meant for tearing. For convenience, stay in the left lane, so that you don’t have to constantly peek over your shoulders, behind which fat window pillars keep other road users out of view. But then that heavily loaded battery will be empty even faster.
That’s why nothing beats parallel parking in a crowded city center where you are the only one to benefit from that mini gap between two boomer SUVs. Just put it in reverse and ram, parking sensors and rear view cameras are unnecessary. A car of 3 meters 63 and a width of 1 meter 68 always fits unnoticed and colliding at this pace is not suicide with four stars in the Euro NCAP.
There you are with your 155 hp and big spoilers from under the fake grille to above the rear window, looking idly beautiful. Don’t worry, it’s also there to be seen. So hey, leave valuables as long as they pass in the trunk that can only hold two iPads plus a thermos and quickly go into the city and live. With a cool 911 you could have whistled to your parking spot here. You can buy that privilege from Abarth for not a quarter of the price that Porsche asks for an unruly icon.
Short history lesson. Long ago, Carlo Abarth was a gentleman who made Fiats faster. In the 1950s he converted a Fiat 500 into a racing mini with a power output of up to 26 hp, double the original. Back then, tuning was still endearing. When regular cars became faster, tuning companies lost their right to exist. The Abarth, which was bought by Fiat, bled to death until it was taken out of mothballs for emo marketing to give the most heavily motorized Fiats 500 extra logo shine. New-style Abarth five hundred cars were more comical than ever with power outputs of up to 180 hp, but when even Fiat realized that this humor would not last long in the energy transition, it decided to electrify the Abarth version after the regular 500.
A bold step because electric cars go very fast, but are unlike Abarths in one essential respect: they do not make noise. Something has been done about it. With switchable engine sound from a jar. Select the appropriate icon in the on-screen menu and the little one will put on an indistinguishable tear throat.
I had a fit of hysterical laughter when I first heard its synthetic vocal cords roar during the presentation of the car. A guilty sense of hilarity brought me face to face with the facts. Speed is war, the acoustic violence is a source of transgressive pleasure. There raged mine abdomen. Embarrassing. On the other hand: the whole person is painful beneath the surface. Be like Abarth. Just like before, scale evil down to comic proportions. Make naughty tender again.
By cutting off the top of the headlights in half, Abarth created what caps call ‘evil viewers’.
Italian exaggeration: immediately calling a car with a folding roof a convertible.
That we don’t think this is an ordinary Fiat: Abarth’s scorpion logo everywhere.
Cramped arrangement. With a charging cable, the trunk is already quite full.
Too cold
Fiat introduces the sinner in battle gear with a bright yellow carriage, Abarth scorpion logos on the flanks, angry-looking headlights and large wheels. The name is in cow letters on the hood and tailgate, so that everyone understands that it is not a Fiat.
The infotainment screen makes me laugh again with the greeting ‘welcome, Abarthisti’. Be sure to stay nearby: the fun is quickly over on longer journeys. The range drops below 200 kilometers in winter and because it is Italian, it may happen that the car no longer wants to charge ten kilometers from your destination with another twelve kilometers of range at one degree below zero. Then the darling is just too cold. A few hours later it works again, but then you, with your little one on the back, are already on the way to the garage with the roadside assistance. So if you see a fast-looking bright yellow car driving very slowly, you know it is an experienced Abarthisto.
Why would you take an Abarth if the ten thousand cheaper Fiat 500e can do about the same with slightly less power? Because he drives so outrageously funny and gives his mini buddy in Dutch practice more joy than three times his driving range. The Abarth makes a world closed to the obese accessible again. That luxury cannot be expressed in money. If the charging technology stops freezing, I’m done.