CarBrandLogos archive · Abarth · 1956

AbarthFiat-Abarth 750

Small Fiats, reworked until they embarrassed cars twice their size.

Photo: GTHO · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Abarth history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Abarth Fiat-Abarth 750, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Abarth's fortune was made not by building cars but by improving Fiat's. The 750 name covered a family of competition machines worked up from Fiat's small rear-engined saloons, sold both as finished cars and as kits a private owner could fit at home - the derivazione that turned an ordinary shopping car into a class winner.

1959Fiat Abarth750GTZagato-rear · dave_7 · CC BY-SA 2.0

Design and engineering

The recipe was consistent: more capacity, better breathing, a free-flowing exhaust and hard attention to weight, all wrapped around the standard rear-engine, rear-drive layout and a four-speed gearbox. In the form recorded here the engine had grown to 847 cc and the car was homologated as a Group 2 touring car, campaigned between 1961 and 1969.

1 Abarth 850 TC · Gabriele Turrisi · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

What made these cars matter was arithmetic. Class racing rewards a small car that is quicker than its immediate rivals, and Abarth built a business on collecting those class wins by the hundred - enough that the scorpion badge came to be read as a promise about lap times rather than a styling flourish.

Abarth Zagato 750 · Tony Harrison from Farnborough, UK;cropped by uploader Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 2.0

Technical specification