General Abarth 500C Details Announced

[olopboy]

I think the offical Abarth press site is official enough for me to believe... Also distinct lack of bigging up the MA of the 500c blurb text unlike the evo where they virtually cover themselves in oil and rub against the MA engine and s&s sytem until they... become even more verbose about how great it is

 

[Scrogg]

I think the offical Abarth press site is official enough for me to believe...

Odd that the Abarth ordering system seems to contradict it then

Oh well, they can't both be correct, so I'm just going to wait until they clarify things...

 

[Ulpian]

All this confusion just reinforces my belief that Fiat is getting very bogged down with nomenclature re all its engine variants. The problem is that it's taking too long to get the new Multiairs to all markets.

As I said originally, and others have corroborated, the AbarthC appears not to have the Multiair engine - but you have to read very carefully to discover this! If it had they would have stated it clearly - as olopboy says - and it would have had better performance and much better economy. Engines are ever so slightly important to performance cars after all

Which begs the question: why not? The Evo has it!

If I was going to be paying upwards of £20,000 for the newest car on their block I'd also want the best engine, not one that will be replaced with something better within a year or so.

It's ridiculous that we all, salesmen included, have to wait till launch before any of us can be completely clear what the spec is. Chaos, but it is Italian so I suppose that's just part of the character

 

[olopboy]

All the UK Abarth sales people/sales heads went out to Italy the other week and drove both the Evo & 500c so they should be able to say without a shadow of a doubt whether the 500c has MA or not.

The ones I've spoken to from my dealer and Peter Robinson (who is the Abarth UK regional manager) who were attending the Stanford AI all said how great the MA engine is in the Evo and that the MTA gearbox in the 500c was a great piece of kit and they are hoping to see the two together some day. I still suspect a copy pasta error when it was being set up on the ordering system, too much source material (press release, Abarth HQ staff) all pointing to MTA gear box as standard but no MA engine.

 

[Ulpian]

Don't worry. I've read lots of reports, especially the ones on Italiaspeed, and nobody mentions Multiair. It hasn't got it. This isn't something they particularly want to publicise though, obviously.

It should have it though, and I'd like to know why it hasn't got it. Can't Abarth get enough of the engines from HQ? Dunno...

 

[sikersh]

Don't worry. I've read lots of reports, especially the ones on Italiaspeed, and nobody mentions Multiair. It hasn't got it. This isn't something they particularly want to publicise though, obviously.

It should have it though, and I'd like to know why it hasn't got it. Can't Abarth get enough of the engines from HQ? Dunno...

Yep, you're right the Abarth 500C doesn't have the MultiAir engine. They'll prob introduce it when it's available on the hard top A500. Makes sense with them being produced on the same line, it's also prob cheaper to stick to the standard T-Jet engine for the time being, production/manufacturing costs etc etc

 

[Ulpian]

It's hard to understand though, isn't it. I mean, they charge enough for the car so you'd think they could fit the best engine.

Next year I guess. Maybe they have a whole warehouse full of the things they have to use up

 

[Scrogg]

...I'm just going to wait until they clarify things...

And they have:

The engine is the tried and tested 4-cylinder, 16 valve, 1368 cc unit (supercharged by a fixed geometry IHI RHF3-P turbocharger) with a peak torque of 206 Nm at 2000 rpm in Sport mode, capable of powering the Abarth Convertible along at a top speed 127 mph, with acceleration from 0 to 62 mph in just 8.1 seconds...