Abarth 695 Biposte Caught Copping a 'Tude

It isn’t a race car, but some of the parts certainly make the Abarth 695 Biposte look like a track-specific machine.

Fiat’s tuning arm is displaying the car at this year’s Geneva Motor Show with specs that will grab your attention quicker than the matte paint coating the car. This is the fastest street-legal Abarth ever made with a 0-62 mph sprint time of 5.9 seconds. It uses the same 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine found in the normal 500 Abarth, but in this case it’s been tuned to offer 190 hp.

Meant as a hardcore performance special, the 695 Biposte has been stripped down to save weight. In that process, the company cast the rear seats aside. The front gets a pair of racing bucket seats, hence the “Biposte” name.

The side windows are fixed with polycarbonate sliding panels that open to allow small objects to be passed in and out of the car without opening the doors.

Further underscoring the car’s performance pretensions, the car is offered with a special gearbox featuring a racing derived engine with upward gear shifts quick enough that “expert” drivers won’t need to use the clutch. The 500 Abarth’s five-speed manual is still part of the standard equipment list.

Even if you stick with the less exciting stick, the car also comes with adjustable shocks, a titanium rear roll bar, Brembo brakes and 18-inch alloy wheels. There’s also a digital data recorder to review your performance at track days.

For better or worse, he hotter-than-ever Fiat isn’t going to be sold in North America. It’s hard to imagine very many of them selling if the opposite were true.