Fiat 500 Abarth
Why 7.6: Fiat's re-entry to America came with a scorpion badge and 160 hp stuffed into a car that weighs about as much as a large motorcycle. Cheap to buy, cheap to insure, driven like the city car it is underneath the exhaust note.
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Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €19k (2013) → €9k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
The long version
Fiat came back to America in 2011 after a quarter-century away, and the Abarth version arrived a year later as the brand's reintroduction to enthusiasts specifically — 160 hp from a 1.4 turbo MultiAir four, a scorpion badge, and an exhaust note tuned to sound like more car than the spec sheet suggests. It was never going to be a track weapon and nobody bought it expecting one; the ownership pattern is city driving and the occasional spirited backroad, cheap to buy new and cheaper still on the used market now. Values bottomed out years ago and have stayed there, the flat line of a car nobody is speculating on. It is exactly what Smiles per Dollar was invented to describe: minimal outlay, maximum grin, zero pretension about being anything more than a fast city car.