Fiat has been putting a lot of money and energy into the rejuvenation of the Abarth brand as its own in-house racing and tuning division. Now preparing to unveil its second model, the Fiat 500 Abarth, at the fast-approaching Geneva show, Abarth also cut the ribbon on its new headquarters. Called Officine 83, Abarth has set up shop in the old Mirafiori engineering plant, adjacent to Fiat's design, experimental construction and engineering departments.
The facility houses the racing team, the competition vehicles department and the road car unit, with the technical and design offices next to the workshops and the business offices upstairs. The interesting part, however, is not what Officine 83 includes, but rather space they left empty, earmarked for a future workshop to produce small runs of specialty vehicles. Of course any inference over what could be built there would be nothing more than pure speculation at this point, but the presence of that open space lends credit to previous reports that Abarth could get its own unique models. With sister-brand Alfa Romeo – now operated by the same chief executive – readying a 500-car run of the sumptuous 8C Spider, and Lancia rumored to get its own version, the idea of a limited-run halo model for Abarth is about as tantalizing as it gets.
