2013 Fiat 500c Abarth: Fiesty and Fun

A fun car doesn’t have to be fast, and a fast car isn’t always fun. Somewhere in between is typically where the sweet spot is – a vehicle that satisfies the guilty pleasures while still delivering performance you can use on a daily basis.  The 2013 Fiat 500c Abarth is an automobile that, while asking owners to make a number of compromises that they might not have to when sampling its subcompact hatchback competitors, still comes through with the kind of visceral thrills that justify its inconveniences.

The Two-Passenger Four-Seater

Right from the start, it’s important to understand that while the 2013 Fiat 500c Abarth might offer two rows of seating, the rear accommodations are vestigial at best.  Even with my relatively short legs, the driver’s seat was pushed back to the point where it devoured any space that could have potentially been used by even the most tolerant child.  It’s better to treat that area of the car as a cargo shelf – and you’re going to need it, too, since the car’s tiny trunk can be made even smaller by the extremely loud subwoofer that comes with the Beats stereo system option.

• Also: 2013 Fiat 500 Abarth : Coupe and Convertible versions
• Also: Fiat 500L and 500C Abarth: Canadian premiere in Montreal

The ‘c’ in the 500c Abarth’s name indicates that the hatchback is also a convertible – although not in the conventional sense.  The Fiat’s door frames and side pillars remain in place while its cloth covering slides back, functioning much like a full-length sunroof, and when closing it offers three different positions that can shelter as much as two-thirds of the cabin from the sun, if desired.  Unlike most sunroofs, however, when fully opened the Fiat’s canvas top almost completely blocks the view out of the rear-view mirror, which combined with the car’s substantial blind spots can make for nervous lane changes.  The top also partially closes as soon as the trunk release has been triggered in order to free up some luggage space – meaning you can’t keep it all the way down with groceries riding in the back.

Snarl and Fury

Abarth is a name unfamiliar to most Canadian car buyers, but in Europe it carries with it the weight of a long and respected history tuning small cars for maximum fun.  The Fiat 500c Abarth represents the proud continuation of this tradition, transplanted across the Atlantic.  The Abarth’s aggressive body kit, scorpion badging, and in the case of my tester, red-on-black colour scheme, are impossible to ignore, and I attracted significant attention wherever I went with the car.

It wasn’t just the 500c Abarth’s boy racer looks that grabbed the eyes of passers-by – it was also the Fiat’s ferocious aural assault that shook glass, frightened babies, and caused pedestrians to pause mid-sentence as I rowed through the manual transmission’s five forward gears.  The vehicle’s 1.4-liter, 160 horsepower four-cylinder engine runs completely unrestricted from its exhaust manifolds all the way to its twin chrome tips, with nary a muffler nor a resonator in sight.  Easily my favourite feature of the tiny little convertible, I found myself almost constantly blipping the throttle, running it all the way up to the redline where it would gladly backfire on the 1-2 up-shift, making enemies throughout my entire neighbourhood.

Not Fast, But Quick

The Fiat 500c Abarth’s soundtrack certainly made me feel like I was behind the wheel of a race car, but when measured objectively the convertible’s performance was far more boulevard than Le Mans.  Acceleration is spirited, but much like the Mazda Miata, it’s possible to stand on the gas, hit the top of third gear, and still be well within the local speed limit.  This contributes significantly to the car’s fun factor – after all, who doesn’t want to be able to drive like a hooligan without any real legal consequences – but as a serious sports car the Abarth comes up short.  A lowered, stiffer sport suspension is on hand to help deal with the engine’s full 170 lb-ft of torque (accessible via the dash-mounted Sport button), and while it does a good job of keeping the car controlled at city speeds, faster corners have a way of highlighting the limitations of the Fiat’s short wheelbase and tall center of gravity.

An Attractive Distraction

The 2013 Fiat 500c Abarth is the very definition of a commuter toy, a car that can transform the daily grind from a grim slog to a grin-inducing blast of turbocharged fun.  An excellent urban weapon, the 500c Abarth’s open-air personality also makes it ideal for sampling the summer sun on the weekend.  Although it would be possible to make the Abarth your only car, you’d have to be able to live with its diminutive passenger and cargo space and its limited top-down visibility.  That being said, a couple of runs to the Fiat’s redline can make all questions of practicality disappear in a haze of adrenaline and vaporized hydrocarbons.