Abarth’s latest offering has petrolheads falling in love with the concept behind it, and it appears the car’s sonorous turbocharged MultiAir four-banger sounds just like it should.
Sporting a more aggressive body kit that signals its Abarth heritage, the 124 Spider’s 1.4-liter engine 170PS and 250 Nm of torque – making it good for a 6.8 seconds 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) sprint and a 230 km/h (143 mph) top speed.
Perfectly balanced and tuned to offer the best driving experience – thanks to its evenly distributed 1,060 kg (2,336 lbs) low weight – the Abarth’s attention to detail spreads all the way to the exhaust note, providing the ideal soundtrack to its bend-thirsty character.
Naturally, this makes the decision of choosing between it and the MX-5 even more complicated, but also confirms that even if both cars share the same basic underpinnings, they are very different.
The Abarth is a hardened variant of the 124 and also comes as standard with the Record Monza exhaust, capable of enhancing the four-pot’s note (as you can clearly hear), but the Italian automobile basically shows how far an MX-5 could have gotten on the “food chain”, if the Japanese wouldn’t have stubbornly kept it simple, basic and very fun to drive.