Porsche Abarth

[jeff m]

I was on the phone to a friend of mine yesterday he said his brother in law has just sold his old porsche. He said it was a Porsche Abarth. (I'd never heard of it)
I did a few searches and found a pic it looks like a 356 that's gonna be a 911 with a ton on cooling fins in the rear and made of aluminium.
He infered it was a vuluable car.
Any info or links anyone
Jeff
911T

[Jeff]

They were built in colaboration with Porsche by Carlo Abarth. 1960-1962 there were 20 built. Aluminium bodies. Engines ranged from 1600 @ 115 bph to 2.0 @ 185 bph. Weight 1715 lbs.

Don't know price range, but if it is a true Abarth, with only 20 made I would say it would bring some good $$$.

[sammyg2]

There was one at last year's Dunkle bros. meet. Here's a picture of it:

[thrown_hammer]

Someone needs to make that body available! Possibly another VW option? Like the 550 spyder stuff.

[cegerer]

[David Bahr]

Porsche was still racing 356s, relatively crude and heavy as a racing machine. Many people were building their own lightweight racing chassis using Volkswagen or Porsche powerplants. Abarth was one of the most successful. Porsche recognized that the 356 was not able to compete with these purpose-built specials and partnered with Abarth on a limited run of production-based racing specials. They were successful and very desirable but technology marched on and Porsche was forced to move past the 356 and design their first dedicated Porsche race car: the 550 Spyder.

Values are tough for such limited production cars, but for a well-restored example I don't think it would trade for less than $125,000 even in a down economy, and maybe as high as $300,000 give or take. I think that range is where 550 Spyders trade, and while the Spyders are more recognized, the Abarths are much more rare.

[6 Shooter]

When I was going to jr. high school, there was an Abarth Carrera parked on the street! Can't forget all of those louvers!! I didn't know what it was back then, late '68-71. Turns out that my future brother-in-law lived a block away and said that the guy was a wrench and used to take it home. I guess people used to parallel park better back then. I'd hate to picture a non plastic '60s sedan with metal bumpers playing bumper cars with an Abarth....

[tchanson]

Originally posted by David Bahr
Porsche was still racing 356s, relatively crude and heavy as a racing machine. Many people were building their own lightweight racing chassis using Volkswagen or Porsche powerplants. Abarth was one of the most successful. Porsche recognized that the 356 was not able to compete with these purpose-built specials and partnered with Abarth on a limited run of production-based racing specials. They were successful and very desirable but technology marched on and Porsche was forced to move past the 356 and design their first dedicated Porsche race car: the 550 Spyder.

Values are tough for such limited production cars, but for a well-restored example I don't think it would trade for less than $125,000 even in a down economy, and maybe as high as $300,000 give or take. I think that range is where 550 Spyders trade, and while the Spyders are more recognized, the Abarths are much more rare.

David,
Not to put too fine a point on it, but did you mean to say the 904 made the Abarths obsolete as a production based (356B) competition car? Otherwise I'm confused as to how the '54-55 550's and '56-'57 550A's could have followed the '60-'62 Abarth Carreras.

Also, to my recollection, the the 130 or so 550/550A's are still $350K cars all day long, depending on history/condition. The recent economic downturn of the past 18 months or so has not affected their prices (nor the blue chip collector market at large) to any significant degree, at least not that I've seen.

The 20 Abarth Carreras don't change hands often, but I seem to recall that they usally carried a premium of $75K to $100K over a comparable 550/550A. More in the range of 904 prices, actually.

In any event, if you ever come across the mythical $125K Abarth Carrera you've described, please let me know ASAP. A quick flip could instantly fund my kid's college educations (plus grad school!) and then some...

Tim

[Rich911E]

Abarth made a bunch of little cars over the years -- some spyders and the little coupes. Although most of these had little Fiat based engines in them, it was relatively popular in the 1960's to swap in a Porsche engine (sort of like what they did with the Coopers which were affectionately renamed "Poopers"). It seems a car as rare as an original Porsche Abarth coupe would change hands outside of a big auction or something.

Rich

[JSDSKI]

The Abarth Carrera was built on the 356B T5 and T6 chassis with the appropriate 1600 4 cam Carrera engine ( I think it was a type 547?). The aluminum bodies were made in the classic Italian style at the time, hand made, no contour or fender line alike, usually the left side was slightly different than the right, etc etc, just like Ferrari, Maserati or Osca prototypes. But underneath it was just straight 356 Carrera suspension, drive train, etc.

I think there was also a RS62 coupe, sort of a RS60-61 spyder with a hardtop, that had the F1 flat 8 engine in it. It spanned the end of the Abarth and beginning of the 904. It was pure Porsche.

I think Glockler (sp?) and Abarth are the only factory authorized hot rods./ specials. And they are from the early days.

Carlo Abarth was a kind of italian hot rodder, like Smoky Yunick, and based his specials on Fiats, the Fiat Abarth, and Simcas, the Simca Abarth. He had some kind of relationship with Porsche that escapes me at the moment -- it was either personal, through family, or sales. I think he had a history dating back to the early 50's with Porsche.

[JSDSKI]

Corrections for previous post on Abarth:
The RS 62 was actually a Type 718 coupe made in '62.
The 4 cam engine was a Type 692 (547 was earlier model).
It used the 1960 356 T5 chassis, no T6's.

And under the category: "more than you ever wanted to know about obscure automotive wheeler dealers"

Abarth was born in Vienna as Karl Abarth and moved to Italy where he changed his name to Carlo. He is Austrian by birth.
His wife was the personal secretary to one of the Piech wives and he was used as the front man on the Cistilia Grand Prix car project. He was used in the same way on the Abarth Carrera project because Porsche didn't want to deal directly with Zagato - the actual builders of the aluminum bodies. Zagato was also building cars for Porsche's direct competitors at the time.

This is all from K. Ludvigson's book.