Oodles Of Character But Nowhere To Put It - Abarth 595 Road Test

Abarth have been warming up various Fiats since the 50s. With a refreshed 500 having hit UK roads back in September, what does the future hold for Fiat's sportier small cars? To find out I thought I'd pop in on some of the current models in the Italian stalwart's tuning arm's roster.

A 595 Yamaha Factory Racing which was hiding the day I went to drive it

I had hoped to get my hands on a Yamaha Factory Racing special edition Abarth 595, launched to celebrate Abarth's ties to the FIM MotoGP Championship, which comes with the 160bhp iteration of the gutsy 1.4 T-Jet engine, uprated suspension and a Record Monza exhaust system which promises to be very loud.

Sadly, there were no YFR-edition cars available on the day of my test, so instead I hopped behind the wheel of a 'normal' 595 with the 140bhp engine to get to grips with. The standard 595 is no slouch however, still managing a 0-62 time of 7.6 seconds. It doesn't take a lot of power to move this car around, weighing only just over 1,000kg.

The car I did drive was still a delight

The seating position is unusually high for such a small car, something I've noted in both the Abarth and the standard 500. I can foresee this becoming an issue for passengers who regularly suffer motion sickness, the raised seating combining with the car's sharp handling to give potentially disastrous results. The pedal box, too, seems to be situated at an unusual angle to the seat, and, particularly in stop-start driving, the angle at which I was pointing my foot in order to operate both the brake and the accelerator became quite a strain.

Once seated, the amount of premium touches the car has been dressed with become apparent - first and foremost being the chunky leather, flat-bottomed steering wheel. This lends a very big-car feel to what is undeniably a very small car.

The sports wheel is to the regular 500s steering wheel like what eating a Yorkie feels like after a Galaxy Ripple

Looking through the wheel, the retro dials have been replaced by an all-new TFT display, which displays information about the car - from the usual revs and speed, to g-force indicators and something called an 'Eco Index' - more on that later.

The digital dials are a welcome distraction from some of the other elements in the cabin. Retro dash trim aside, in between the garnish of new tech a lot of this car is still very recognisable as carry-over from the car the Abarth is (distantly) based on - the previous-generation Fiat Panda.

Nice premium garnish over basic underpinnings inside

Turning the key, it would be easy to forget that the teeny bonnet hides just a 1.4 as the burble from the exhaust combines with the chunky wheel to add to the illusion of 'bigness'. Elbows out driving it is.

Burbling my way into early-afternoon Edinburgh sunshine, it wasn't long before my fingers were drawn to the 'Sport' button. This announced my arrival to the roads of Leith, with the exhaust barking and spitting it's way through the Shore. Sport mode also sharpens the throttle response, making the tiny Abarth like a poison-tipped dart, slicing it's way into the smallest of gaps with incredible precision.

As expected with an Italian car, revs are required to make the most of this in-town gap-grabbing prowess. At low speeds, before the turbo kicks in, the engine can feel quite slow on the uptake. The firmer suspension and heavier steering add to a pay off that lead to me turning sport mode off in town - though on better maintained roads this would be less of an issue. With a car as small as the 595, it feels like it could easily be lost down one of the many potholes that litter the landscape around the north edges of Edinburgh.

As the roads opened out towards the west I re-engaged sport, taking a moment to admire the turbo dial jutting from the dash top. This takes on a red hue in sport, a trick car companies have been using for a while now to emphasise their cars' Jekyll and Hyde sporting potential.

The 595 is a very Jekyll and Hyde car: around town it can be comfortable, compliant and even economical; but push that little button by the air-con and suddenly it pops and cracks and snaps at the heels of the Astra in front which has been hogging the outside lane on the bypass for the last mile.

The car doesn't settle well in Sport mode, and the infectious bite to the controls was turning me into a crazed lunatic, unable to settle myself. Popping back into normal mode on the bypass, I noted through exuberant driving, I'd been afforded an ' Eco Index' score of 2.5 out of a possible. Dr. Jekyll was displeased with my right foot. Settling into a cruise, it wasn't long before the digital dial crept back up to hover around 5.

Returning the keys of the Abarth, I felt a slight lump in my throat. Ominously, there will be no Sat Nav integration into the new screens, and whisperings from Turin seem to hint that Abarth will not be working their magic on the new-edition Fiat 500, instead making way for a fast version of the imminent 124 Spider, which will go on sale later this year.

Whilst a base-spec Abarth 595 undercuts gutsier competitors like the Fiesta ST and Mini Cooper S, to get close to their levels of performance in the Italian car you need to spend a lot more and opt for the 180bhp Competizione spec car. Either of those rivals would do very well to best the tiny Abarth on character though, something that the 595 has in larger quantities than could be squeezed into it's miniscule boot. (I'm assured roof bars are available.)

Tiny boot left after space taken up by oodles of character and fun