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The Magician
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AbarthAlfa RomeoFeatured Editorials & ContentRacecar ArticlesRacecar Features

The Magician

 Robert Newman

Karl Abarth was a magician. A waver of wands whose magic brought the exquisite pleasure of higher-performance motoring and motor racing to men and women of modest means. His speciality was conversion. And he turned the Fiat 500 and 600 low-powered tin boxes into teeth-gnashing, tire-smoking predators that won thousands of races all over the world. But it didn’t stop there. He built cars that broke world land-speed records, single- and two-seater racers, and short runs of road cars exquisitely bodied by some of the greatest Italian stylists of the day. In the late Sixties, he even built a 600-hp V-12 that was to have clashed with the Ferraris at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Photo: Courtesy of Giorgio Nada Editore
Photo: Courtesy of Giorgio Nada Editore

To own a Fiat Abarth road car was to be a cut above the next door neighbor and his flaccid factory Fiat. It was a desire for more, for better in the frugal gray world of postwar renaissance Italy.

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Robert Newman
Steve Natale has been playing with cars ever since he was old enough to first hold a matchbox car in his hand. A lifelong enthusiast of anything old with an engine in it or wheels on it, Steve has been active in the hobby for over 35 years. Currently he owns a successful marketing company with his wife Mary, is an automotive photographer, blogger and writer for several automotive magazines and regular contributor to various automotive websites. Steve has attended vintage car events and visited car museums and collections around the world.
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