This Is The Most Powerful Abarth 500* Yet

If you wanted the most powerful version of Abarth’s worked-over Fiat 500, the 695 Bisposto has been your go-to. With a healthy 187bhp from its 1.4-litre four-pot, it’s more than enough for the dinky hot hatch –  but now there’s an even more powerful one. Sort of.

This is the Abarth Offshore, which if you couldn’t tell from the images or the name, isn’t really an Abarth 500 at all. Nor is it a car.

Like the Abarth 500s though, it is a hotted-up version of a ‘regular’ Fiat – that being the Car 500 Offshore revealed in April and not as an April Fool’s joke it turns out. It's unclear what engine is powering the Offhore, but we do know it's making 227bhp. Not only is that quite a lot more than a Biposto, but almost twice that of the boat it’s based on.

Happily, like any good Abarth, it gets a throaty exhaust setup too. This one comes courtesy of marine specialists Riva rather than Akrapovic, but that’s surely no real compromise. It gets the usual visual upgrades of a sportier face, some racing stripes for good measure and bigger… alloys? Honestly, we don’t know what to describe those attempts at wheels as.

Benzoni sports seats are thrown in there too and with four-point seat belts no less, plus a quilted leather backrest because why not, eh?

Other goodies included for the Abarth Offshore are a recessed steel ladder, a Garmin stereo system and a shedload of RGB LED lights to bring a bit of party fever to the tiny boat.

We have no idea about pricing, but we anticipate it to be a fair bit more costly than the £96,780 Car 500 Offshore. It will be just as limited as that boat though with just 500 set to be made.