Test Drive: Fiat 500 Abarth is here - roar, zoom

— -- The Fiat 500 Abarth that's going on sale this month is a hot-rod version of the Fiat 500 mini-car that's been on the market for about a year.

The Abarth brings the same compromises of the conventional 500 (mainly to do with the car's tiny size), but balances them with stunning performance, edgy personality and not a bad price.

The name comes from Karl Abarth, who made a business of turning small cars into big performers and, later, a line of snarly, go-fast exhaust systems you could buy from catalogs.

Americans tend to pronounce the name "AY-barth," but Fiat and its U.S. distributor Chrysler say the correct pronunciation is "AH-bart," finishing with your tongue on the roof of your mouth as if interrupted before you could say the "h."

Fortunately, the little screamer's easier to drive than to say.

A course outlined with orange traffic cones in a parking lot at the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field was the venue. Comparing the Abarth with the normal 500 was the agenda.

The standard-duty Fiat 500 is nicely sporting, able to juke and jive and jitterbug through a twisting path in competent fashion in the hands of a bold driver. The Abarth does it faster, louder, with more aplomb and grace — and leaves you howling with joy as you pilot a car made for the very thing you're doing.

To accomplish that, the Abarth has different tires than the conventional model, a stiffer chassis and suspension, and bigger brakes.

The 1.4-liter four-cylinder is turbocharged to boost its power way up to 160 horsepower and either 150 pounds-feet of torque in regular mode or up to 170 pounds-feet when you push the "sport" button telling the engine-control computer you're more interested in punch than petroleum parsimony.

The hopped-up car has, surprisingly, an easy-engaging clutch that cuts you some slack in stop-go traffic. Yet it seems to grab hold just fine when you're thrashing around in the likes of cone-filled parking lots. That's a hard combination of attributes to achieve, and it makes the Abarth as forgiving in the daily grind as the standard model is.

The Abarth's extra power is appreciated in normal use. It means the car accelerates more smoothly, and relaxes the need to shift a lot to stay in the perfectly correct gear, especially on a highway characterized by speed-up, slow-down traffic.

The gripes are the same as in the standard model:

•The combination tachometer/speedometer is hard to read at a glance.

•Fat center stack of controls intrudes on inboard leg-flop area.

•Cargo space is limited. The back seat, however, has unexpectedly good knee- and legroom.

It probably wouldn't be an Abarth if it didn't have a loud exhaust, and that's an important consideration. Could you live with that noise — kind of like you remember from high school when your best buddy ran over something that punched a hole in his muffler and he couldn't afford to fix it?

Would you find the constant bleat of the exhaust stimulating, reminding you that your mount is a racer tamed for the street? Or perhaps juvenile, as if you'd slapped those fat, megaphone exhaust pipes onto your cute little Fiat.

Chrysler and Fiat believe the Abarth is just right for people who like a blustery sound from the exhaust, enjoy great handling and braking from the chassis, and want to drive it as-is in satisfying fashion on a racetrack or parking lot autocross course.