Abarth Grande Punto / Punto Evo
Why 7.8: Abarth's first fully modern hatchback: a 155-hp 1.4 turbo four in Fiat's Grande Punto bodyshell, with a 180-hp esseesse kit available from launch for another £3,500. It never got the 500 Abarth's cult following, which is exactly why it's still cheap — clean examples trade for a fraction of a Mini Cooper S JCW of the same era, and the ones left are driven, not stored.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €25k (2008) → €9k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two ISOFIX positions on the outer rear seats, the outer pair being the ones the standard covers.
The rear anchors are the supported route — the manual points child seats there, and front-passenger ISOFIX is the exception rather than the rule. A belt-mounted seat up front needs the airbag off, and cars with a rear row don't always fit a deactivation switch, precisely because the rear seats exist.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
While the reborn 500 Abarth was busy becoming a lifestyle object, Fiat quietly built a faster, more overlooked hot hatch on the Grande Punto platform: a Garrett-turbocharged 1.4 T-Jet four making 155 hp standard, a six-speed manual as the only gearbox offered, and a factory esseesse kit from 2008 — Koni-tuned suspension, bigger brakes, and an ECU remap to 180 hp — that dealers could fit without voiding the warranty, for £3,500 on top of the car's own £14,405 launch price. The 2010 facelift, badged Punto Evo, carried the same formula through MultiAir engines up to 180 hp before Abarth folded the range into a Punto SuperSport top model in 2012. None of it ever built the cult status of the 500 Abarth sold alongside it — Fiat's own marketing leaned hard on the smaller, cuter car — and that neglect is the whole reason it's interesting now: depreciation ran the normal hot-hatch course, 40-50% down inside five years, and clean used examples now trade from under $10,000 to the high teens depending on esseesse spec and condition. Nobody is speculating on a Grande Punto Abarth. The people who own one bought a genuinely quick, genuinely cheap Italian hot hatch, and that's exactly what they're using it for.