Abarth 1500 Biposto
Abarth · introduced 1950
Abarth · introduced 1950
The Abarth 1500 Biposto is an experimental coupé designed by Franco Scaglione, who worked for Bertone at the time. It was displayed at the 1952 Turin Motor Show. Following the Turin Show, it was purchased by Packard and brought to Detroit, where it was used for design inspiration. The car is one of the first, if not the first, Abarth cars based on a Fiat model. It features a futuristic design consisting of a central headlight, similar to the earlier Tucker Torpedo, and a vast, panoramic split window plus fins in the rear. The wheelarch design is to emphasize the sporty character. The overall design is believed to have paved the way for the Alfa Romeo BAT series of concept cars.
The 1500 Biposto mechanics were mainly sourced from Fiat models. The Fiat 1400 engine has a 2 mm larger bore and measures bore 84 mm (3.3 in) × stroke 66 mm (2.6 in), which results in 1,480 cc and (also thanks to Abarth tuning) 75 bhp (75 hp; 56 kW) output instead of the original 50 hp (37 kW). The Biposto can reach 180 km/h (110 mph). The front suspension features double wishbones and coil springs, the rear suspension has a live axle and semi-elliptic leaf springs. The car has drum brakes on all four corners. The Biposto was given to motoring journalist Dick Smith in mid-1953 as his prize for suggesting a new Packard advertising slogan. Smith sparingly drove the car for two decades, before putting it into storage. It did not reappear until put up for auction in 2003 where it was acquired by historic racer, car collector and restorer Chris M. Drake. Unveiled after a 7-year restoration by Chris M. Dr
From the Wikipedia article Abarth 1500 Biposto, CC BY-SA.
This is the catalogue record of the Abarth 1500 Biposto, one of 32 models Abarth has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1950. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Abarth 1500 Biposto properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1950s were the optimistic post-war boom, when chrome, tailfins and new unibody construction met the first purpose-built motorways and sports-car racing shaped reputations. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Chevrolet Chevrolet Bel Air, the Toyota Toyota Land Cruiser, the Cadillac Cadillac Eldorado — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Abarth 1500 Biposto reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1.5-litre inline 4; kerb weight is recorded at 870 kg; drive goes through 4-speed manual; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Abarth's own catalogue the Abarth 1500 Biposto sits alongside the Abarth 1000 GT Coupé, the Abarth 124 Rally, the Abarth 124 Spider, the Abarth 205. The record names the successor = as its predecessor and the sp = uk as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Franco Scaglione for Bertone. Assembly is recorded at designer = Franco Scaglione for Bertone.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
The catalogue records what the Abarth 1500 Biposto was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.