The Fiat 124 Abarth Isn't a Better Mazda Miata

this is a 2017 Fiat 124 spider Abarth and it's Fiats version of the Mazda Miata and I don't mean that Fiat made a sports car to compete with the Mazda Miata I mean this is literally Fiats version of the Mazda Miata they basically share an interior they share a chassis they share a lot of parts under the skin and they're made on the same production line in Japan today I'm going to show you why fiat has not built a better Miata or a worse Miata but rather a different Miata I've borrowed this car from a viewer here in the Washington DC area and I'm gonna start by showing you around the 124 Abarth and of course I'm gonna show you all of its unique quirks and its weird features and then I'm gonna get it out on the road and find out how it drives and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the 124 Abarth experience click the link below to go to autotrader.com slash oversteer before I get into the Cork's and features I'll start with the most obvious thing the biggest difference between the avars or the Fiat a-- as it's called by all the cool kids and also tyler Hoover and the Miata the Miata uses a 155 horsepower 2-liter four-cylinder but the Abarth uses a 1.4 liter turbocharged four-cylinder with 164 horsepower but the biggest difference is the torque while the Miata only has a hundred and forty eight pound-feet of torque the Abarth has 184 pound-feet an increase of 36 pound-feet of torque more on that in a minute when I get behind the wheel obviously the other big difference between the two cars is the styling to me the main difference is this the Fiat has more of a traditional classic roadster look well the Miata is more modern and daring and futuristic more specifically here's what the Fiat looks like in front man here's the Miata here's the Fiat from the side and here's the Miata and here's the Fiat from the back and here's the Miata now you hear a lot of opinions about whether this cars more or less attractive than the Miata and I will leave that for you to decide but I will say there's one thing on the extra this car that I really don't like and that is right here this line in the middle of the front fender I saw this car for the first time at an Auto Show and I remember walking up to it and thinking is that line real that panel gap right in the middle of the fender and indeed it is real I've never seen a line this obvious in any other car or this far back and the fender and once you see it you can't unsee it every time you see a Fiat ofor now on you will see that line now the other thing about that line is that it separates the plastic front bumper from the metal fender panel and so if you look closely at it you can see differences in color on either side of the line which only makes it even more obvious now I'll move back to the exterior in a second but for now I'm gonna start on the interior and the biggest thing you notice the second you climb inside the 124 if you've spent any time in the Miata and that is just how much stuff is shared basically all of it the steering wheel is the same the turn signal stock is the same the wiper stocks is saying the climate controls the vents the infotainment screen the parking brake it's all carried over and it's just crazy to see if you've been around the Miata look at all that stuff that's borrowed right out of the Miata but then it says Fiat on the steering wheel another thing you notice when you climb into the interior the centre climate control van is placed right next to the hazard light switch and strangely enough they're about the same size I've never seen this before a climate control vent the same size as a hazard switch then again maybe it's nice to have a big hazard light switch in an Italian car another interesting thing about the interview look at the center console there's no cupholders that's because there behind you there directly between the seat so you put your cups in it you can drink out of them but that's not a very convenient place for a cup holder so you can move them check this out you can detach the cup holder from behind the middle of seats and you can attach it on the side of the center console but only one of the cup holders is designed to be attached that way the cup holder on the driver's side is angled in the wrong direction and so it doesn't fit over there nonetheless that is a pretty cool idea moveable cup holders about your car doesn't have that and since I'm on the middle the interior we kind of talked about the infotainment system and my favorite infotainment quirk every 124 spider is navigation ready but you have to pay extra $500 extra to get the official Fiat part to give your car an actual navigation system the owner of this car told me he spent 150 bucks on amazon for the part and just installed it himself and now he has a navigation system that's just a little easter egg in case you were thinking about buying a 124 spider and you were thinking that maybe springing for navigation you don't have to and if you've already bought one and you've already paid the $500 for navigation well oops another interesting thing about navigation even though the car isn't equipped with navigation but it's navigation ready until you install that card it flashes a little warning message when you've tried to go over the navigation tab and says your car is not equipped with navigation visit dealer to try to get you to spend that $500 and just to tease you to get the navigation it gives you your latitude and longitude letting you know you could have navigation but you don't a couple of other interesting things in the infotainment system in some cars you have a day mode and a night mode and it changes the background color to make it more readable at night in this car the day mode is just the normal brightness then you put it on night mode and it becomes unreadable it's just really dim it doesn't change the background color I think it just gives it to the point where you can't see it put it back in day mode and you can read it again the night mode it's dim again it makes no sense it's the chin seus night mode i've ever seen or an infotainment system something else I like about the infotainment system when you go into the settings menu you see all sorts of different settings for the car and for the sound system and various other things then you go to safety and there's nothing there's just a tab and you can't make any adjustments there are no safety settings good luck in a collision now speaking of infotainment system settings this car has all the usual ones interior lighting your lighting chimes all these cars are super configurable these days but this car has something I haven't seen or a lot of other ones that would be turn signal volume you can have it on low and you can have it on high interestingly there's no real difference between the two here's low and now here's high interestingly the high setting is still really quiet if only there was a super high and one final interesting infotainment system quirk if you go into the applications tab and go under warning guidance the car will tell you if you have any warnings fortunately right now there are no warnings found I guess that's a good thing another interesting thing about the Fiat a-- it has no glovebox or at least it has no glovebox in the normal place instead the glovebox in this car is in between the seats and it's massive I can't believe how big this is I've seen these in between the seat storage solutions before and they're usually pretty tiny and barely get an insurance card in there but in this thing look at this I can get an entire paperback book inside and a lot of other stuff too and speaking of storage this car also has another interesting storage compartment beyond the center glovebox and it's behind the seats you gotta fold the seat forward and there's a hidden compartment back here that you can open up and put stuff in there's one on both sides behind me passenger seat and behind the driver's seat now the car's owner didn't even know that little compartment was back there until we started poking around looking for quirks and features so most people would have no idea that little hidden compartment is back there unless they've seen this video another interesting thing in the interior that would be the Sun visors which are very oddly shaped it's like they have no backing to them and it's like the mirror is just grafted on I especially like the driver Sun Visor because it still has the little inspection sticker from the person in Japan who last inspected this Italian car and since I'm poking around on the top of the wind show you might as well talk about the roof of this car I recently reviewed it convertible and I didn't put the top up or down I knew people got very angry so here goes to put the top up in this car you grab onto this latch in the middle of the interior the top lifts forward and then all you got to do look at that it's so simple boom and now the top is closed how easy and so then we have to talk about opening the tab now one of the advantages of the Miata has always been that if it's a sunny day or if it becomes a sunny day while you're driving and you're sitting a stoplight you can just open the top quickly without having to get out of the car like in some convertibles and that is still true in this car you just have to do a little Lachi thing here push the top back and it's off and now I getting drive around it's 2 seconds you can drive around with the top down that it might not be a power top but that is the next best thing next up we can talk about another interesting thing on the exterior of this car that would be the Abarth badges they're gigantic they're like the size of my hand which is odd for a car this small and also they're placed on some sort of black plastic backing and the front one doesn't look that at a place but look at the one on the trunk it's oddly large for this vehicle another interesting thing is the turn signals now the turn signals are inside the brake light and inside the turn signal there's a little body colored strip interesting thing about the turn signal is the size of them sort of depends on what angle you're looking at them from dead-on from the back where you're singing right now it looks like it's only this part if you come to the side it looks like it's letting up the entire light another interesting thing about the Abarth even though this car has only four cylinders it also has four exhaust pipes which may seem like overkill but it does sound pretty good [Applause] in the final interesting exterior quirk on the 124 spider that would be badging we'll start with the badging on the windows it all says Mopar on it because ultimately at its heart this is a Fiat Chrysler product and so the windows apparently we're all Mopar windows you get the same Mopar badge you would on a Dodge Grand Caravan the windshield has it and the side windows have it and under the hood it also says Mopar very very distinctly I have no idea why they didn't change it just say Fiat but they didn't it says Mopar now if you look all around this car you'll be hard-pressed to find a Mazda badge anywhere even though they built it but if you look in the doorjamb you can see that it says that it was manufactured by Mazda and if you look under the hood you can find one little tiny Mazda badge but those are the only two places we found them the badge you won't find on this car yeah it doesn't say Fiat anywhere on the exterior this car the only fiat badge in this car is on the steering wheel that's it otherwise it just says a bar so those are the 124 Abarth's unusual features and quirks now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives compared to the latest Miata okay so the first thing I noticed it's pretty tight in here so I'm six foot three or six foot four if you believe that video about how tall I am and I don't have a lot of room I get the seat all the way back and my knees are right up against the thing even despite my height I mostly I get into cars and I don't have a problem but in this car it is pretty tight it's pretty quick in terms of the Miata it actually feels about the same the difference is the way that the power comes on in this car the turbocharger really answer that old-school turbo type feel to it where it kind of comes on at you know later and later in the rev range it kind of kicks you in the face which which I personally like people who prefer more linear power delivery I probably prefer the Miata important mode instantly the throttle response is a lot sharper feels nice alright I put this car is even out quick the Miata is but this car clearly feels a little bit quicker now we've filled in the car and now a couple people came up to us while you're filling in the first question is what is that there's no badges on it that make it obvious what it is and so people think that it's anything Barr's they don't know what that means but everybody thinks it's a more expensive car than it is I think it's an alpha is it like a Lamborghini someone asked because they just don't know now I've read and I know that this car is it dramatically fast on the out in fact some people are saying this might be just a little bit slower however one thing I will say to this car is credit is that the because of the way the turbocharger comes on it sort of gives you a little bit more of a thrill it's less linear and it kind of kicks you in the face a little bit more and the sound is certainly greater than it is with Miata so you almost feel like you're going a little bit faster sitting at the stoplight the car feels reasonably quiet and comfortable it's not shaking earning like that like probably the old 124 fighters do when they're in a play the air conditioning works everything seems reasonable now if you're buying this car because you think it'll sound like the 500 Abarth unfortunately you'll probably be disappointed it does not it definitely sounds a little bit more throaty and muscular than a Miata and obviously more than virtually every other four-cylinder car but it doesn't have that sound that the 500 abarth of the crackles in the pops and I mean that thing is one of the great sounding four-cylinder cars ever downshifting rev-matching is super easy I love how tight the shifter is it feels great it just feels really really good this is how car shifters should feel and of course the clutch is really light to small engine etc so it makes it pretty easy to kind of up shift down shift throw around and of course the size of the car goads you into wanting to you know experience that and go faster and go into corners faster you know one interesting point is a lot of people are kind of it is a debate you know what's better than the other yeah but one thing we're noting is they're both better than virtually everything else and there's just not that many cars in this segment anymore if you want these cars it's nice that they both exist you know there's not that many more options personally I fastly prefer convertibles to coupe so I would buy this over at BRZ or an FRS it's probably sacrilege on internet forum but I don't take the car on the track all that often so the rigidity doesn't matter if you have much but having the top down a nice day like this on this winding road I mean it's perfect yeah the down shifts are just so so easy makes it so easy to shift it's such a relief coming off like I mean dragging but driving ATS exotic cars right like the heavy clutch and they're all gated so you have to look where you're shipping this car it just it makes it so easy it it's the kind of car you want to learn to drive stick on it cuz it's easy to drive but also it's just the kind of car you want to take down a back road and have fun with I'm sorry about the audio quality my computer says it couldn't find the microphone audio from this Drive so that's just the sound in the car it gets worse from there so I'll sum up the rest of the drive for you I then took the car on some twisty backroads and I decided it's especially great for that no surprise the biggest takeaway is that this car isn't a cruiser it's not a car for long trips or highway drives because it's tight inside and sort of frenetic but it's so perfect and so wonderfully in its element on backroads both because it handles so well and because you can really use the whole car and all the engine and rev it up to the top of each gear the handling is seriously sweet and while I'm not gonna pretend my palate is so refined that I can tell if it's just ever so slightly better than the Miata or worse than the Miata I will say there's no doubt that these are still some of the most fun little cars you can buy especially for the money and with that on to the Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the 124 Abarth is nice looking better than average but it's not some stunning supercar and it gets a 6 of ten acceleration is fine at does zero to sixteen about 6.5 seconds which lands at a three out of ten on the Doug score acceleration scale handling is good very sharp and crisp and predictable with great steering feel and it gets a seven out of ten which is a great score for such a relatively inexpensive car cool factor is a bit lower this is a cool car sure but as it becomes more common it's already starting to get familiar and at the end of the day it's a four-cylinder vehicle based on the Miata so I have a hard time giving it more than a five out of ten finally there's importance this car isn't particularly significant to the car world especially long term but it's more significant than most everyday cars on account of the fact that it's a rear-wheel drive sports car and it'll likely have a long career being modified for track and auto cross use as the years go on it gets a four out of ten bringing the total weekend scored at twenty five out of fifty next up are the daily categories starting with features the 124 is reasonably well equipped but it's missing most of today's top technology some of that stuff is optional and could bump up its score a little higher but this car isn't about features and I wouldn't select every single extra equipped this way it gets a 5 out of 10 comfort is reasonably good the ride is a little harsh but not terrible the seats are nice but interior space is tight especially for taller drivers so it gets a 5 out of 10 quality is reasonably good the interior feels pretty nice but obviously this isn't some high-end luxury car and I do worry a bit about long-term reliability it gets a 6 out of 10 practicality is rough it has less than 5 cubic feet of cargo volume and only two seats and that earns it just a 2 out of 10 finally there's value which is reasonably strong the 124 Abarth starts around $26,000 and it's a lot of fun for the money especially considering you get a brand new car with a long warranty and it gets a 7 out of 10 add it all up and the total daily score is 25 out of 50 add up the weekend and the daily scores in the total Doug score is 50 out of 100 that's exactly where it belongs right in the middle a great example of a fun car that lands directly between the Best Exotic supercars I review and normal boring average everyday cars you [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,024,058

Keywords: fiat 124 abarth, 124 abarth, 124 spider abarth, fiat 124, fiat 124 spider abarth, fiat 124 spider, 124 spider, mazda miata, mazda nd miata, doug demuro, demuro

Id: W-YcpWYAido

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2018