Standalone Abarth Sports Car Coming in the Next Two Years

In today’s platform & component sharing-obsessed auto industry, the news of an all-new sports car can only bring joy to our hearts, as well as a quick bank account balance check( just in case... ).The move we are talking about comes from a nation which has made performance vehicles part of its DNA: Italy.

But let’s get to the business: Abarth, a division of the Fiat Group, confirmed the launch of its first stand-alone sports car. Rumors indicating that the brand, which has been marketed as a separate entity from Fiat, would create its own go-fast vehicle, have been around ever since 2008, when Abarth was revived, but this time the news is official.

And there’s more. The wave of rumors indicated that the Abarth sports car would share many of its components with the Lotus Elise, but it looks like the vehicle will not be connected to the British carmaker.

Antonio Labate, sales and marketing director at Abarth told Autocar that the car will not be developped together with Lotus or use the Elise’s chassis.

The executive added that the car will hit the market in the next two years and that it will be a pure two-seater. We expect the car to use a “under-1,000-kg” recepy and therefore offer pure driving sensations.

Since this news got us very excited, we decided that we has to taste some Abarth before the upcoming model is released and we are currently testing a 500 Abarth. We’ll share all the spicy details with you in our test drive section soon.