Officine Abarth, at the centre of Fiat’s huge Mirafiori industrial complex in Turin, is Abarth’s very modern home. From the expansive glass-walled foyer filled with iconic cars, to the minimalist corridors adorned with design sketches and evocative images from Abarth’s past, it’s a perfect study of a contemporary workplace. Calm and welcoming, yet invigorating and dynamic, with an eye firmly on the future.

Yet step inside one office and you’ll find yourself back in 1960’s. Adorning the artful slim-line desk are a vintage Bakelite phone, an old-school desk blotter and a pair of heavy tortoiseshell glasses. The walls are a visual tale of a glorious heritage for race and road cars. Dotted amongst them are portraits of the man who started this incredible journey – Abarth’s late, great, founding father, Carlo Abarth.

When Abarth was re-born as a manufacturer in its own right in 2007, it was decided an office for Carlo should be retained in the new building. This commemorative act is no small gesture – after all, it’s prime office space, opposite the boardroom. Carlo’s office, though, serves as a constant reminder of how his pioneering performance-driven ideals still sit at the core of Abarth’s ethos today.

The room is full of wonderful touches and genuine items from Carlo’s original office. The nameplate on the door says Karl Abarth – Carlo’s given Austrian name, before he adopted an Italian moniker following his move there in the  1940s. On the desk are vintage pots of Cocco glue and Pelikan 4001 ink in a shade of ‘Blu Brilliante’. If you were filming Carlo’s life story, this could be a working set.

And what a story you’d tell. It’s the tale of a man who built and raced motorcycles in his youth with huge success, even beating the Orient Express in a mad 1.372 km dash across Europe from Vienna to Ostend. There’s a great cast of supporting characters – Italian grand prix ace Tazio Nuvolari, iconic industrialist Ferdinand Porsche, and Cistitalia racing driver Guido Scagliarini, who all helped Carlo hone his craft, establish his reputation and start his eponymous company.

Even then, the story is just getting started. On Carlo’s desk, there’s a scale model of a Fiat 600 Multipla, advertising ‘La Marmitta Abarth’ – the pioneering exhaust that established Abarth’s reputation for tuning and transforming ordinary Fiats in the early 1950s. With a series of record-breaking speed runs at Monza in the 1960s – for which Carlo resorted to a diet to lose weight – allied to racing and rallying success in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, Abarth’s reputation for using hand-crafted performance parts to turn small cars into giant killers was firmly established.

Standing in this office you can feel Carlo’s spirit and understand why it still runs through Abarth today. “Carlo’s grand idea is more than a philosophy – it’s an absolute necessity,” says Abarth’s Head of Technical Development, Maurizo Consalvo. “Our ethos at Abarth is to create something from an everyday car that has this unique signature of incredible performance.

“To achieve that, you need a different approach to the rest of the industry. You need to live in the world of racing. In racing, if you stand still, you’re really moving backward. You need an obsession to continually improve every part of the vehicle – a constant evolution. At Abarth, we want all the people who drive our cars to feel a little bit of Carlo’s racing spirit.”

There’s something about your relationship with a car – a pride of ownership that rarely extends to other possessions. It starts with the exterior paint scheme, alloy wheels and body-kits that mark your car out from the pack. It continues with the colours and materials you choose for the interior – your personal driving space. Finally, it’s how the car feels when you drive it – a ride that is taut and responsive, or smooth and refined, and an engine note that is laid-back or raucous.

At Abarth, you can have your car, your way, thanks to a wealth of personalisation options. It all started in the 1950s, when Carlo Abarth sold the race-inspired ‘La Marmitta Abarth’ exhaust kit for standard production Fiats. Today, Abarth’s list of kits includes Brembo brake and Koni suspension kits for added handling performance, Esseesse alloy wheels for a dash of extra style, and the distinctive Record Monza and Record Modena exhausts to audibly mark you out.

Then there are the accessories that offer a smaller, but no less distinctive touch – whether it’s aluminium pedals, oil and fuel caps, Abarth-branded interior moquette mats, or winter tyre kits complete with an Abarth-liveried snowboard. And they all come in Abarth’s distinctive wooden shipping crates, which you get to keep.

“We’re not selling cars that are a commodity,” says Abarth’s Head of Technical Development, Maurizio Consalvo. “We’re making something that is an extension of a driver’s personality. It’s important that the car embodies some of your values, some of your taste.

“For most mass-production manufacturers, high levels of personalisation are challenging in terms matching the expectations of the breadth of their audience and the complexity of manufacturing small volumes. At Abarth, we have a direct connection with the people who drive our cars. We know their tastes and we share them passionately.”

How the car will be manufactured and built also comes into consideration. Cars such as the 695 Biposto or limited-edition model runs, for example, benefit from the racing-inspired, hand-built processes used in the Officine Abarth workshop in Turin.

“Using this more bespoke approach means we can be smarter about defining our product line-up – whether it’s having distinctive core cars, special editions, kits of equipment that we can add at the dealer, or hand-built cars, which is what defined the decision to build the Abarth 695 Biposto in Officine Abarth,” says Maurizio.

“Because we’re making our cars in smaller volumes, we have the flexibility and can react quicker to introduce more performance, more technology, or more desirable materials,” says Maurizio. “In our workshop, we can exploit our flexibility to create something. We don’t need to invest a lot of money in buying or creating specialised robots to assemble a unique car. We already have the perfect intelligent machines – our highly-skilled mechanics – who can use their experience, and adapt it to any special car we produce.”

“There is no metric to express a car’s character and soul. It’s the sensation of driving a race car that is crucial in making an Abarth feel different”

Maurizio Consalvo, Abarth Head of Product Marketing and Technical Development

How do you like your exhaust note – raucous, throaty, or something more refined? Well, you’re in luck, because Abarth has a range of exhausts for all tastes.  

Exhausts lie at the heart of the Abarth story. In the company’s early days in the 1950s, founder Carlo Abarth needed to turn a quick profit to fund his racing team. The answer: selling race-inspired Abarth exhaust kits for standard production Fiats. As well as transforming the look of the car, and – with subtle engine tweaks – their performance, it gave the normally unassuming Italian super-minis a feisty Rottweiler bark that belied their compact size.

“Our obsession at Abarth is about creating cars that are unconventional,” says Head of Product Marketing and Technical Development Maurizio Consalvo. “It’s not just performance in terms of numbers – the highest power, the lowest weight, the fastest to 100km/h. What’s just as important, and harder to create, is an emotion.

“There is no metric to express a car’s character and soul. It’s the sensation of driving a race car that is crucial in making an Abarth feel different. And the sound you get from the engine and exhaust is an important part of this.”

At the core of Abarth’s modern exhaust range is the Record Monza – a name that harks back to Carlo Abarth’s industry benchmark-setting speed runs at the famed Italian track in the 1950s and 1960s.

By splitting two sets of twin exhaust pipes – outer and inner – engineers can run the inner pipes through a standard muffler for a more muted exhaust note for everyday driving. When the engine is run to 4,000 revs, the exhaust gas activates a pressure-sensitive valve, which opens the outer set of un-muffled pipes to deliver the full, unfettered exhaust note. It transforms a refined engine note into a raucous roar.

“Creating the Record Monza was an important achievement because it gave us the ability to modulate the exhaust sound, depending on how the car is being driven,” says Maurizo. “The two inner muffled pipes give a quieter engine note for standard driving, while the outer pipes deliver the full orchestral performance. You can also mix an intermediate range. What you get is a rich sound that combines two different tones, two different frequencies. It’s not about a peak of noise. It’s a matter of quality. It’s a unique solution, only offered in this segment by Abarth.”

Also available is the optional Record Modena exhaust, which uses the same technology but blends the four exhaust pipes into two, creating a different exterior look and a slightly smoother exhaust note.

The king of the Abarth exhaust crop, though, is the Akrapovic unit on the 695 Biposto, with its striking titanium tailpipes. While the Record Monza uses a passive valve, where the exhaust note is matched to the revs, the Akrapovic unit uses an active valve.

Press the ‘Sport’ button on the dashboard, and along with all the other enhancements – access to the full 190bhp from the 1.4 T-jet engine, and sharper steering and throttle response – you get instant access to the full opera of the exhausts throughout the rev range. “You don’t just get a different behaviour from the car,” says Maurizio. “You get an entirely different voice.”