Shocker: Abarth Might Bring Back Petrol Power

The last couple of years have seen car companies from all ends of the market row back on plans to go all-electric by a certain date, as it’s become clear that demand for full EVs has been slower than expected and various governments have floated loosening regulations to allow for that.

One curious holdout has been Fiat’s in-house tuning wing, Abarth, which transitioned to a full EV lineup with the death of the 595 last year, and has so far maintained that that won’t change any time soon.

Finally, though, it’s considering relenting, as confirmed by Fiat and Abarth’s European boss, Gaetano Thorel, in an interview with Autocar. Abarth buyers, he says, want petrol engines “not only for the power but because Abarth customers fundamentally buy the car and then modify it with their own hands.” He goes on to say that “the Abarth club are not very happy with us.”

That’s not a huge surprise given that much of Abarth’s success since the historic brand relaunched in 2007 has been down to the fizzy, buzzy nature of the 1.4-litre turbocharged four-pot that powered its warmed-over versions of the Fiat 500, Punto and 124 Spider.

By contrast, if you’ve ever seen one of its new breed of EVs – the 500e and 600e – on the road, then, well… you probably live near an Abarth dealer. That’s despite both being fitted with controversial ‘sound generators’ which attempt to replicate the four-pot rasp of the older cars, albeit in a not entirely convincing manner.

The question of what petrol-powered models Abarth could launch is a tricky one. An obvious candidate would be the new mild hybrid Fiat 500, but that car is itself a hasty re-engineering of what was once intended to be an EV-only platform, so Thorel says it would be tricky to engineer more performance out of it due to mechanical and packaging constraints.

We’ll have to wait and see if and when the brand comes up with anything else petrol-powered, then, but three words are currently floating around our heads: Abarth Grande Panda.