Bit of a difficult one this. Yes, Abarth have some prestigious history of turning average cars into little rockets, but in all respects how many Abarth badged cars these days are TRUE Abarth models? I'm talking about the cars that you can buy brand new from Fiat that come this way.
Abarth used to take a car and work over every inch of it. This included the engine, suspension, brakes and all manner of different parts that were improved/ modified and upgraded to make the standard car something special.
However, Abarth was bought out by Fiat way back in the 70's when they went (I think so anyway) bankrupt.
Since then a lot of Fiats were sold as Abarths, but they were little more than hotted up standard cars (much like the XR range of Fords). In fact I read that the last true Abarth car, as in having been worked over by Abarth engineers themselves, was the Strada/ Ritmo Abarth.
With all respects, since then the Abarth name has been used more for body/ interior styling than anything else. Just look at the accessory brochures from Fiat to see this. You can buy all kinds of Abarth accessories, but virtually none of them actually offer any performance increase.
Therefore I tend to look at Abarth as more of a styling exercise these days, and don't mind so much that people add badges onto their cars as long as it's done tastefully (and put on tastefully modified cars).
Perhaps Fiat should have been more exclusive and used the name for very high performance models only. Much like Ford did with Cosworth and Vauxhall did with Lotus.
So I guess I'll have to sit on the fence with this one....