CarBrandLogos archive · Abarth · 2022

AbarthAbarth Classiche 1000 SP

Five cars built to recreate a 1960s sports racer on modern bones.

Photo: MrWalkr · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Abarth history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Abarth Classiche 1000 SP, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Classiche 1000 SP takes its cue from the Fiat Abarth 1000 SP of the mid-1960s, a small rear-mid-engined sports racer with a wraparound screen and a low, rounded nose. The modern car repeats that shape and that layout - rear-mid engine, rear-wheel drive, two seats, open top - but underneath it uses contemporary Alfa Romeo hardware, with a 1.75-litre turbocharged four in place of the original's tiny thousand.

2022 Abarth Classiche 1000 SP · MrWalkr · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

Roberto Giolito and Ruben Wainberg drew it at Centro Stile Fiat, and just five were made in 2021 and 2022, each built to order for collectors rather than sold from a price list.

In production

It is a coachbuilding exercise more than a model: proof that the group could still commission something to a shape rather than to a business case, and a rare instance of Abarth's own history being treated as worth restaging.

At a glance