Fiat 500 Abarth Review!-The Little Car That Could

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enw all right so today ladies and gentlemen we are in a 2013 Fiat 500 Abarth or AAR however you want to say it this belongs to my friend John and he has traveled the entire East Coast lately and you might have seen this on subx fans Channel as well and he decided to come by and let me drive it too and I really appreciate it cuz this is a very interesting experience so far the car is so small I'm not used to driving something this small and I keep giving so much more room for like my hood and depth perception if that makes sense but the car is not stock this has an intake a tune and an exhaust and it actually sounds good I know that sounds like mean me to say to question it but when you have a 1.4 L under the hood that's pretty remarkable that it can make this grunty of a second down and not have a ridiculously high pitch one but at the same time the exhaust system really really helps the exhaust system is by Modern Performance it's their MPX model and I think that really attributes to the sound of the car and as well it really makes it crackle and snarl but at the very bottom John always jokes about that it sounds like a snorting Pig almost almost around Idol and I think that's hilarious cuz the more you hear it the more you can't unsee it the car comes stocked with 160 horsepower and 170 fo lb of torque but with the upgrades on this car just the intake tuned exhaust it goes to 205 horsepower and 245 footb of torque that is pretty badass I think it's so interesting anymore that so many of these new four cylinders that come out with just a tune get so much more torque and it used to be the complete opposite back in the day it used to be you would get a bunch more horsepower and just like no torque the way you sit in this car is very interesting because your brain is like okay I'm in a very small car but you sit kind of high up and it is roomy I know that sounds really weird but especially for somebody of my size I think if you were any taller especially in the passenger seat which doesn't go up and down at all you're going to hit your head on the roof but for somebody use me I'm 5'9 essentially around 5'9 and I have perfect head room I have really good visibility cuz glass everywhere and you don't feel claustrophobic another thing is that the windows it's in the center so I got totally thrown off my first time cuz I was reaching over here and I couldn't find it I felt kind of stupid the shifter it feels really light but it's really good it's in a very odd interesting position cuz it's more up here rather than all the way down here kind of like if you ever have been in a car like an ep3 from Honda or Honda Element even it's all the way up here so you get that kind of vibe the amount of Turbo noise that this car makes is awesome it's going to be hard to ever ride at a normal Fiat 500 after this cuz I think I got pretty spoiled the car is front-wheel drive and it actually does not have really any torque steer which is pretty remarkable pretty much the only times it does have torque steer is if there's kind of changes in the road if that makes sense if there's a different transition there's a little bit of body roll but it's you know it's not that bad got a little back fire slow down brakes are good the brakes have a very sensitive pedal it feels a lot like the Focus S very very direct you don't have to go into it you just hit it so this little thing just wants to keep going it doesn't ever want you to stop and little bit of under steer but that's just normal with front-wheel drive when you go into it you just kind of work your way around it and break and go in and pretty much no turbo lag at all cuz it got a little itty bitty turbo and it is pretty cool that Fiat made its way back to the States and I was talking to John earlier and I can't believe that this car has been out since 2007 I was completely dumbfounded by that fat cuz it feels like they almost just came over here because they really haven't changed the body style at all it'll be cool to see what they do next along with their partnership with Chrysler and that sort of thing and shut down you are seriously driving an awesome little go-kart you just go around and you break boost and you leave the corner and it's great an interesting thing about this car is that it's a 5-speed and John tells me that it needs a six gear it feels like it's missing essentially it feels like it could just be be there but it's not so you get on the highway and you're at 70 mph right around 3,000 a little bit over 3,000 RPM and you're just winding it out the whole time and it should have some kind of I think a better overdrive GE in this car I mean we have cars with seven and eight speeds now so come on Fiat another really interesting thing about this car is that one of the tires no matter what is towed in for some reason every single tire on the car except one is not aligned properly and this is out of production it's not like a thing that happens it just it's there what I'm trying to say is before this car reached 10,000 Mi John got 12 alignments before it did it again so I think that's ridiculous so this car actually brought him from Rochester New York all the way to Miami Florida then back twice and that is pretty remarkable I think that's pretty awesome that you pop the hood of this car and you're like that did that not bad another thing about it too is that you would feel like you'd be concerned like cruising on the highway with this car with how little it is like do you feel like your David versus Goliath versus all the semi- trcks and everything but honestly it's not bad you might get a little bit of a gust of wind that makes you sway over a little bit but 99% of the time it's not bad it's not like flying a kite on the highway essentially he does kind of scratch the mud flap sometimes cuz of all the stuff in the back he has for the road trip but when it's completely normal it's fine they also really outdid themselves cuz they put five cup holders in a four person car so they're so thoughtful they're so thoughtful the cool thing about the car is that it has three modes it has normal Sport and then everything off but since it's very wet outside today we're going to stick to sport mode cuz if we don't we'll probably end up in a tree cuz this car is so fun to go around corners in but what's so funny is when you get on it you hear this very like high-pitch wind and you hear the turbo just wanted to keep going and when you let off you get the gratifying Purge noise and it's great as I reach behind the steering wheel right here and there's these buttons and I was like what are these I come to figure out they're for the radio and I was like mistaking them for almost shifters and what's interesting is that the models in Europe have paddles but the ones over here don't so I thought that was kind of weird another thing I've noticed is with this car is that it's hard to drive for a reason you wouldn't think is that it fogs up really quickly because of how small it is the air circulates so quick and if you don't have your heat on your AC or whatever you're doing your defroster it just bam it's all fogged up and it feels kind of dangerous if you don't get on it really quick cuz you have to like see through the fog or pull an Ace Ventura and stick your head out the window to try and see but the Abarth which interesting is that this is a fully loaded car but the base model in comparison is like a completely different car different wheel size different interior different climate control all these weird things and I understand that they want to sell base models for people that want to customize it themselves and just kind of tear it apart but I feel like if you already have the Fiat 500 that's normal and has all that why wouldn't you just kind of make the abar kind of the top dog as it is and just mark it it as this another cool thing about the car is when you do have 205 horsepower it's in a 2300 lb car with a full interior so that is pretty awesome oh spinning a little bit who whoop okay so what's interesting is since the car is so narrow you get any little rut in the road it's just like yep I'm going this way yep I'm going that way so you have to be ready for it so you almost get replaced with getting channeled rather than Torx steer the Torx steer there really isn't any but but you just have to be on top of your game on what surface Road you're on all right guys I want to thank you guys so much for checking out this quick little review video I hope you had a good time cuz I know I did swirling around in a Barth and I want to thank John so much for driving here on his way back home to Rochester and letting me drive his car that is amazing and I will see you guys next time and take it easy have a good one oh\n"