The Fiat 500 TwinAir is arguably the best non-Abarth version of the car you can buy but people haven't yet tapped into the performance potential of the tiny 875cc turbo engine. A friend and I have made plans to see if we can make her 500 a bit juicier

Here’s what we’ve discussed:

Remove factory airbox - DONE This has already made the car sound better with a little turbo whoosh during gearchanges.

De-restrict exhaust - From the factory these cars come with a huge centre silencer and not much else save for a small resonator just before the tip. The easiest and cheapest way to improve this is to cut the silencer out and weld a straight piece of pipe in its place. Will look at fabricating a larger diameter exhaust later but for a small engine such as this a big 3-inch exhaust will have little effect.

Front mount intercooler - The factory TwinAir intercooler is mounter vertically, so only about 30-40% of it has any air flowing over it. Forge motorsport currently make a huge front mount intercooler for the 1.4 Abarth but it’s a very complex structure that comes with a replacement crash bar. My feelings are that for a two cylinder engine running approximately 120-130bhp (35-45 more than standard remember) it’s less about the size of the intercooler and more about the efficiency of it. I think we’ll be able to get away with a small/medium size intercooler that would be mounted in the flow of air better than the factory one is. After all the grill on the TwinAir is nice and wide, so I think we’d be better off trying to use the airflow we’ve got rather than making the intercooler big for the sake of it.

Without any modifications the standard engine (84bhp) can be mapped to gain an extra 15bhp. This is where the problem lies - how good is the turbo? It’s already a laggy car which implies the turbo is near it’s maximum boost level. We don’t know what psi it runs at and I’m finding it impossible to find out so a boost gauge is probably going to be fitted.

Would we fit an aftermarket turbo? Down the line maybe. Right now it would cost far too much to do, but I would’t mind trying my hand at a custom exhaust turbo manifold with only two exhaust ports haha.

A lot of research went into these engines and it’s going to take a lot more to make them better. But these mods are in line with other stage 2 specifications so hopefully we’ll see a bit more than 120bhp.

Keep us (me) updated, my mate has a Mito TwinAir and wants more power.

Engine feels like it could pull for a lot more than the 5k it stops at.

Any progress chaps? We’ve just acquired a twin air, needs a bit of work but quite tempted to get a bit more out of it before going down the remap route. Wondering how you got on!