Come Out And Play

Sporty little Fiat hits the long and winding road

First week of an Australian summer, the perfect opportunity for a top-down foray into the countryside. Or so you’d think. Even putting aside Melbourne’s notoriously fickle weather, the fact that a number of Australian states are simultaneously under snow/on fire makes the arrival of a new season feel somewhat irrelevant.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and the raindrops falling from the ones overhead should make this drive in the Abarth even more entertaining.

Plenty of kilometres have passed beneath the 124 Spider’s wheels over the past three months, but they have largely been incidental time for a day-long, just-for-the-hell-of-it drive. Six hours, 400km, innumerable corners and all manner of road surface, a solid litmus test for any car.

Will I be begging for it to end, or keen to turn around and do it all again?