[Mcduff]

Had the luxury of a most of the day test drive, courtesy of the wife as her brand new 595 Turismo had to go in for some snag rectification they missed in PDI (cracked windscreen :?) .
Car was one of the salesmans company car and had just over 4.3K miles on it.
Roads were very greasy and covered in lots of crap as is usual for this time of year locally, temps were below 8 deg C but sunny.

Had a right hoot and even the car seemed to enjoy it as its tail wagged regularly .

The abarth seemed keen to rev more so than one I had a brief test in a couple of months back which had 2K miles on its bores so maybe the Multijet gets better with miles, that said it doesn't feel as free as er'indoors 1.4 T-jet fitted to her new 595 which has next to no miles on it.

Suspension wise I was impressed at how composed the damping is , the roads I drove are anything but smooth so often create bumpstop engagment on most cars that traverse them at pace. I feel the ARBs could be a touch stiffer as it was easy to introduce a bit of lurch influenced oversteer on roundabouts but spring rates for road use seemed well set up.

 

[ItsyBitsy]

Now that you've test driven the 124 spider twice including an Abarth model, are you planing to get one for yourself?

 

[Stewie]

Pretty nice review for the test drive. Pretty cool that you had it for a good amount of time as well. Thankfully there should be some anti-roll bars in the aftermarket to tighten it up a touch as well as other suspension components to really bring it in. How do you feel the car snapped back when the tail end kicked out ?

 

[Mcduff]

Not sure I'd get one, I'm not far enough into my current daily driver PCP to get much out of a deal, though the dealer seems very keen to help. That and I have my other "toy" in a TVR T350C which is a keeper. The 124 would be replacing my daily driver so maybe not much sense have two sports cars and nothing practical to fall back on. . Though the TVR always seems to need something fixing having just had a full clutch replacement and associated niggle fixing over christmas.

 

[RBH58]

****...that TVR is gorgeous! But they've never been a byword for reliability. LOL

In terms of practical cars, my wife an I also had the same discussion recently. We'd just bought the Abarth 124 and were debating whether to replace our BRZ with something a bit more practical (we were considering a BMW 230i M-Sport) and she said "Why? There is only the two of us. If we have visitors that we have to carry around for a weekend, we'll just hire a car. Why buy a car with a couple of weekends a year in mind?" So now we've got an MX5 RF & Abarth 124. Seems like a fine arrangement to me

 

[reece146]

Love the colour on the TVR. Sweet.

 

[Bob Z]

I like the fender badge, which is being discussed in another thread now.