The Abarth in Fiat 500 Abarth is much more than just a performance division of Fiat. Similar to famous car companies such as Porsche, Ferrari, and Ford, Abarth is named after its founder: Carlo Abarth. Born Karl Alberto Abarth on November 15, 1908 in Vienna, Austria, he turned an early fascination with motorcycles and racing into a lifelong pursuit of speed. His family originated from Italy and after spending a few years there as a teenager, he eventually emigrated to Italy, changing his name to Carlo in the process. Nicknamed the “wizard” because of his automotive engineering abilities and knack for tuning, Carlo turned a successful racing career into Abarth & C. S.p.A.
At the age of 16 he became an apprentice for Carrozzeria Castagna, an Italian coach building business which had moved on to design motorcycle and bicycle chassis. He spent two years there before returning to his home in Vienna, where he got his first taste of racing. Though he was originally hired just to test motorcycles, Abarth quickly jumped into the drivers seat. During his time there he won 5 European championships before an accident in 1939 forced him to retire. Carlo took all the experience he had gained building, testing, and driving motorcycles and turned it into a career.
After World War II, Carlo moved to Merano, Italy, where he joined forces with Ferry Porsche, son of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche. Carlo Abarth became an Italian distributor of Porsche products. It was through this alliance that he became involved into building Formula 1 cars. Ferry later helped Abarth acquire a position as director at Piero Dusio’s Cisitalia, where he helped build a cutting edge one-seater race car. Unfortunately, this car was so cutting edge that it had drained the financial backing of Cisitalia, causing them to go under. However, from this failure came the birth of a new company that was represented by the scorpion zodiac sign; the sign Carlo was born under.
On March 31, 1949 Abarth & Co. was born. Abarth was able to recover the remains from some of the other project cars started by Cisitalia, to get on track. He made it clear that the company’s main purpose was for making/modifying race cars. At this time his racing team was also convened, the team was named “Squadra Abarth”. That same year one of his cars won the Italian 1100 Championship and the Formula 2 title.
Abarth and his modified cars were not only winning, they were setting records. Companies such as Fiat began to notice his success and offered to reward him monetarily for races won with their cars. This strengthened his relationship with Fiat who bought Abarth & Co. because of financial troubles in August of 1971. Abarth & Co. was set up to race and generally did not make much of a profit.
After the merge, Fiat restructured Abarth so that the main focus was to build rally cars for them. His rally cars had achieved much success, and many cars stayed in production well into the 1980’s. Abarth died in 1979 due to illness. Unfortunately the 1990’s caused Abarth & Co. to cease its existence as the performance section of Fiat. However in 2007 Fiat reopened Abarth & Co. where high performance cars are made. Of the cars that they make today is the small but wicked Fiat 500 Abarth.
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