i've been on the phone to a local fiat dealer and they told me that "the grande punto abarth won't be with us untill next year but the 500 abarth will be in the uk for around the october this year"
he said that the 500 is a far more popular car than the punto and they will sell far more.
I think that's salesman not knowing what they're talking about again, and not what I've heard from Fiat Marylebone, Desira and Mangoletsi - The Abarth brand will be launched in the new year with both GP and 500 models available. The 500 production facility in Poland is running at full capacity and a refurbished factory in Italy will not come online till the final quarter of 2008. They've even cut down making Pandas to make more 500's and they've still run out of capacity - Taking Fiat on it's history, can you really see the niche model Abarth 500 making it's way over here in 6 months when apparently it will only launch in Italy in July?
Also the local dealers that aren't getting an Abarth franchise are even more in the dark to what is going on than the ones that are.
The Abarth brand has just launched in Switzerland, Austria is next, then Germany, Portugal, Greece, Holland and Belgium, after those finally the UK, Spain, France and Poland will get it.
Don't read anything into rumours saying that it takes ages to convert the Abarth GP to RHD btw - it's mostly the same car as the T-Jet, so there are no issues with steering rack, master cylinder relocation etc. It's just another example of Fiat screwing over the UK again.
Sorry about the ranting tone of this post
- I'm just as frustrated as the rest of you concerning Abarth.
