ON A SOFTER NOTE

The 2200 Spider represented the ambitions of Abarth and patron Fiat to strike at the higher order of Italian motoring, but it was destined to remain a rarity

- RICHARD HESELTINE

We appear to be driving at the pace of a funeral cortège, but then we don’t want to scare the locals, do we? The New Forest offers a seemingly never-ending but ever-changing backdrop, not forgetting the requisite ponies that roam where they please with unhurried intent. It is hauntingly beautiful, the landscape teasing us, perhaps even goading. It’s late winter and near-deserted save the hoofed herbivores, and we are in an Abarth with all that entails. This day will end with wide eyes, even broader smiles, and tested reflexes. Or a stampede. One of the two.

But no. This is not your usual classic Abarth, should such a thing exist. Forget shrill sports racers or Fiats pop-pop-popping and banging their way to valve bounce, the 2200 Spider is that bit more… refined. It is nothing like what you might picture an Abarth to be in your mind’s eye, not least because it is powered by a straight-six rather than a peaky four-banger. What’s more, it’s mounted in the front. As such, this handsome convertible has a certain enigmatic air that only heightens its obvious attraction.

Posterity pays scant attention to this subspecies of Abarth, but it should. The 2200 and its siblings represented a period when the marque of the scorpion attempted to take on the exotic elite. This move was quite the leap, but then company founder Carlo Abarth (né Karl) always was a big-picture man and a defiantly self-directed one at that. He had already succeeded in so many other spheres, and in relatively short order, so making ‘big’ cars should have presented just another stepping stone in his well-crafted and carefully nurtured narrative.