a good friend is just about ready to get the new Abarth Spider

[AndyS]

we just sold his classic Abarthised Fiat 500 that used to be my car for 17.5K on Bring a trailer, and he has a couple of extra older 124 Spiders he is not using much we are selling as well. he is keeping his one orange 124 that he has had since he was in College. He also has a bunch of really nice older Alfas and a Lancia Flaminia, so don't feel too sorry for him trading away some of his collection. I love classic cars and own more than a few myself, but you just can't beat the newer cars for performance, safety and reliable daily driving.

We are going to take the money from the sale of the 3 older Fiats and buy a new red / black Abarth 124 Spider with a 6 speed manual. hoping to go out and drive one in the next month or so. I will take photos and report back when we get a chance to. If the dealer does not have what we want, we might just order one from the website exactly how we want it and wait for it.

One issue is my friend is a big guy at 6 Feet 2 and over 200 pounds. we heard the Abarth cars have seats that are different from the regular 124's, and give a bit more room for larger drivers. will let you know what we find

this is what we want to get



we will want to do the chip tuning piggyback and maybe an intake pretty soon after he gets it. with that aggressive of a look, I think its needs at least 200HP

[dreavis]

I was driving down the road the other day going about 30MPH. There was a group of cars stopped at a light going the other direction. Something caught my eye, so I took a closer look. It was a red 2017 Spider. IN a group of about 25 cars, this one really jumped out at me. I was surprised that it was the Spider because my first thought was that a more "exotic" car must have caught my eye.
It may be almost identical to the new Miata, but the Miata doesn't catch your eye like the new Spider.

[AndyS]

my 6 foot 3 inch tall friend just got to sit in a 124 abarth without the Recaro seats, and he did fit in it! we should be ordering a red and black 6 speed with those seats in the next week or so. not sure what they call the seats that worked for him. must be the Abarth base model seats. apparently there are 3 different style seats between the regualr 124 series and the Abarth 124 cars

[AndyS]

so we got a great deal on a 6 speed manual base model red Abarth 124 Spider from the dealer in Roseville near Sacramento and will be picking it up Sunday. Put a deposit down and they are holding it for us. they took $1500 off dealer sticker. we also found out Fiat wants an extra $2000 to paint the hood and trunk satin black like we wanted, and no one is stocking that version either. A special order would be at least 3 months. Since I restore and paint cars for a living, I will be doing the matching satin black details on the car exactly like the factory did for half the price. I have a really strong 2 part satin black urethane aircraft quality paint I will be using. We thought about a satin black wrap on those areas instead, and I am sure it would have worked too, but they really do not look as good or last as long at real 2 part paint does.

I will post photos of the car and the satin black rally look conversion when I get the car here in the next couple of weeks.

we plan on an ecu tune and a few other things eventually.

here they are rallying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qm6xM6JUx8

[AndyS]

we decided the car looked great as is once we saw it in person, with the dark charcoal gray wheels, mirrors, windshield surround, and roll hoop covers tying the two tone together nicely. Doing a heritage stripe would add another color and muck it up IMO. You would need to black out the dark gray stuff as well, and then that may be too much black. Maybe sometime down the road we will do it.

No ecu tune at this point yet. I learned that the piggy back box tune ecm's that do work well all are 3 sensor harnesses now, and the cam sensor is just awful to get out deep behind the engine up against the firewall. the whole idea of a piggyback is that it needs to be easy to remove if you have warranty work to do. no way in hell I'd want to be swapping out that rear sensor connection ever.

We did add the 500 Madness gopedal to it, and really like the way it removes the throttle hesitation on tip in. Liked the "sports plus" and "minus 2" setting on it for general sporty driving. in the normal driving mode now, feels more like the sport mode was before, and in sport mode, its now pretty damn frisky.

Car has plenty of power stock, and the Gopedal helps wake it up sooner. Its not a hot rod, its a sports car, and the low end torque and mid range punch make it very fun to drive. the ride quality and cornering ability are also just unreal on the Abarth 124 Spider. I really like the car a lot!

[vandor]

I never understood the go-pedal thing. It basically pushes the pedal more for the driver. Hm, why doesn't the driver just push the pedal more?

[AndyS]

pushing the pedal further or faster does not reproduce what the go pedal does at all. it changes the ramp curve on the electronic throttle to force the throttle body to open on command, and not to some epa mandated weak ramp.