Behind this legendary brand lies the work of a true engineering genius. Karl Abarth, born in Vienna in 1908, achieved almost unprecedented success in the field of motorsports, the result of absolute dedication to the world of engines, and to a truly prodigious talent, passion and feeling for innovation.

Karl Abarth lived a long and exciting life, but here we will concentrate on the strong, successful collaboration between the Abarth and Fiat brands. Karl Abarth’s story did not begin with cars, but motorcycles. When he was twenty he won his first races on a Thun motorcycle, and the following year he built his first motorcycle with the Abarth trademark. Unfortunately, a serious accident during a race in Linz, forced him to abandon motorcycle racing, but he did not lose his desire to push himself to his limits, and he continued to race with sidecars, a vehicle that he made popular thanks to exploits such as the race against the Orient Express train (won by Abarth of course). A second serious accident in 1939 forced him to abandon racing altogether.

And so Abarth’s second life, and the real legend, began. In 1945 he moved to Merano and became Carlo Abarth, an Italian citizen. In 1949, after working for a short time for Cisitalia, he founded Abarth & C. The first car produced was a 204 A Roadster, derived from a Fiat 1100, which immediately won the Italian 1100 Sport Championship and the Formula 2 title.

At the same time, Abarth had the brilliant idea of combining racing activities with products for the mass market, and he began to build his famous conversion kits for standard production cars, that increased their power, top speed and acceleration. Important elements in the kits were the exhaust silencers which over the years became veritable icons of the ‘Abarth style’. Thanks to the experience gained years earlier on motorcycles, the Abarth silencers were the state of the art in technological terms. The first prototypes had a central pipe with a constant section and side ducts in fibreglass, eliminating all the diaphragms so as to keep gas compression to a minimum. It was a simple but innovative system which gave his products a clear advantage in terms of performance, and an unmistakable full, throaty sound. In just a few years, Abarth & C. went global: in 1962 it produced 257,000 silencers with a staff of 375 people, with exports accounting for 65% of output.

There were two extremely important elements behind the success of the Abarth components and kits: excellent advertising and successful racing. Carlo Abarth introduced marketing and communications techniques that are still used today. To convince motorists to remove their standard silencers and install an Abarth unit, he invented a clever advertising campaign based on an elegant presentation of the product. Publicised with a new, revolutionary language in the main newspapers, the silencer was presented in an opaque black version with chrome-plated terminals, and offered at a price well above that of the competition (4,500 lire as opposed to a maximum of 2,000 lire). His colleagues were initially sceptical about this new strategy, but they soon changed their minds: it was an immediate, extraordinary success. The first fifty units were built for the Fiat ‘Topolino’.

The success of the Abarth brand in the minds of motoring fans was constant, incessant, and became almost overwhelming as time passed, reaching its peak in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Carlo Abarth created the legend of the “scorpion” with total dedication and almost frenetic activity, which revealed the characteristics of a genius.
 

The stages of this continuous exploit and unparalleled success story followed one after another at a rate that is still amazing today. A long march, punctuated with records, triumphs, and epoch-making ideas that changed our approach to the sports car. In 1956, driving a Fiat Abarth 750 with a body by Bertone, he set a whole series of duration and speed records: on June 18, on the Monza track, he broke the 24-hour record, travelling 3,743 km at an average speed of 155 km/h. Then, from June 27 to 29, on the same track, he broke numerous other records: the 5,000 and 10,000 km, the 5,000 miles and also the records for 48 hours and 72 hours. International success followed, and on July 21, 1956 the influential German magazine “Das Auto Moto Und Sport” dedicated the cover of issue no. 15 to the Abarth 750. The same car was also available with two bodies by Zagato, the Fiat Abarth 750 Zagato (1956) and the Fiat Abarth 750 GT Zagato (1956). On May 11 and 12, 1957, at the 24th Mille Miglia, there were 20 cars representing the ‘scorpion’ in the 750 class and 16 of them concluded the race. The ‘roar’ of this extraordinary car even reached the United States: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., son of the American President, rushed to Italy personally to sign an exclusive agreement with Carlo Abarth to distribute the model.

In 1958 Abarth achieved a masterpiece on the new Fiat 500, completely transforming the small runabout, and highlighting its huge potential. That same year the partnership with Fiat was stepped up, and Fiat undertook to reward Abarth financially on the basis of the number of victories and records that the stable notched up. This agreement was behind the amazing list of victories in the coming years: 10 world records, 133 international records and over 10,000 victories on the track.

The legend grew, and entered every day language. The Sixties were a golden decade for Abarth. The name ‘Abarth’ was synonymous with ‘speed’, ‘courage’, ‘performance’ and ‘conversions’. The list of cars that put the Abarth name firmly on the motor racing map was a long one: from the 850 TC, which won on all the international circuits including the Nurburgring, to the Fiat Abarth ‘1000 saloon’ and the 2300 S, which set an amazing number of records on the Monza circuit in spite of dreadful atmospheric conditions.

In 1965 Carlo Abarth wanted to set a record himself. On October 20, 1965, he set the acceleration record over a quarter of a mile and over 500 metres on the Monza track, with the Fiat Abarth ‘1000 Monoposto Record’ Class G, 105 bhp, and the next day he set the same records for higher classes in a 2000 cc Class E single-seater. Yet another anecdote that says a lot about the tenacity of the man, who had to lose 30 kg in weight at the age of 57 in order to get into the small cockpit and drive his cars to victory.

From 1971 Abarth became part of Fiat Auto, and the last car on whose development the founder of the brand collaborated actively was the A112 Abarth. During the 1980s, the story continued with other famous cars such as the Fiat 131 Abarth which won the world rally championship, and the Ritmo Abarth. Carlo Abarth died on October 24, 1979, under his birth sign: Scorpion, of course.