The Awesome Fiat 131 Abarth
What do you do if you’re comfortably on top of the rallying world with a dominant car that revolutionized the sport?
Well, if you are the Fiat Group, you abandon it and race a new one based on a humble and decidedly unsexy family sedan, then you go winning the world championship with it. Three times.
Our story begins in late 1974 when the men at Fiat’s racing division Abarth saw their project for a rally weapon based on the mid-engined X1/9 abruptly canceled.
Fiat’s higher-ups preferred the image boost from sporting success to benefit a volume seller rather than a niche sports car, so, much to their dismay, Abarth’s men were ordered to start again from the then-recently introduced 131 family sedan.
The replacement for the popular Fiat 124, the 131 was offered as a four-door sedan, a station wagon but also as a two-door sedan, never a popular configuration in Italy but one that was instead favored in important export markets like Germany.
Technically and aesthetically conservative to a fault, excitement was never part of the brief for the 131, but that…
