FIAT are making big waves with the Abarth brand in India and now, with this car, they hope to conquer the hot-hatch segment. Will it happen? We find out
Story: Ravi Chandnani
Photography: Sanjay Raikar
With my heart on fire and my pulse racing faster as the clock ticked away, I find myself driving the second Abarth offering in India: the FIAT Punto Evo Abarth. It has less power and torque than the little pocket-rocket called the 595 Competizione (Abarth’s first offering in India) but despite the deficit, I still find myself grinning about it. This Punto put a smile on my face, read on to find out how it did that.
Covered in shiny black shade, the Punto Evo Abarth is a gorgeous car to look at. The Italians are design gods for me because 90 per cent of the time their creations turn out to be awesome looking masterpieces that are awe-inspiring. This car pictured here is Abarth’s iteration of the Punto Evo and even though the design is old, it still manages to strike all the right chords. To the untrained eye, it might not look anything more than beautiful, but look closely and those scorpions on the car suggest something out of the ordinary. That is the Abarth badge and it means you had better back off that puny little 1.2-litre hatch of yours or else… They are present in abundance, on the exterior as well as the interior, proudly announcing to the world that you have a fabulous hot hatch.
The badges alone do the talking; however, to add some more weight to the statement, FIAT simply slapped some red racing stripes with Abarth lettering, an appropriate amount of chrome and killer looking 16-inch “Pincher” style alloys. You really don’t need to mess with the styling when you buy one because the Punto Evo Abarth looks absolutely perfect the way it is.
None the less, you can always opt to do up the interior of the car. Because when you talk of performance, you imagine a racy looking cabin, additional gauges like boost pressure gauge, a shift gauge, et cetera, and some sort of carbon-fibre trim. What you get instead is a standard Punto Evo’s cabin. Yes, there are a few goodies, like the yellow and red stitching on the seats and some of that colour in the instrument console, but everything else is just good-looking, not racy good-looking.
Apart from these few changes to the cabin, there is nothing new to point out. The driving position is still awkward and you have to fiddle around with the adjustment to find the least bothersome position. In addition, the rear seat space is still an issue.
