2025 Abarth 600e | UK Review

Pity the people charged with building the next generation of electrified hot hatches. It strikes me as a thankless task. Supercars aside, is there a segment more hopelessly reliant on the rise and fall of excitable revs? Hot hatches are meant to unlock the hooligan in you; most electric cars drive with the saintliness of a vicar’s sermon. Added to which, hot hatches must be built with a tight profit margin in mind, meaning all the expensive chassis tech available to, say, a Porsche Taycan, cannot be replicated. 

It’s not like carmakers are doing themselves any favours with the standard hatchbacks underneath either. Far too many are now pseudo-crossovers, which are good for families and great for hiding bulky battery packs, but about as well suited to B-road crushing as a marshmallow is to jackhammering. The 600e is clearly a case in point: by day, it’s a fundamentally worthy attempt to make a Fiat 500 child-friendly; by night, Abarth has been tasked with turning it into something that might conceivably tempt someone from a VW Golf GTI. Tall order. 

Evidence of just how tall abounds. Abarth has thrown itself into the styling overhaul with considerable gusto. Sills, spoilers, grilles, funky 20-inch wheels, glossy black trim – you name it, the 600e has it. All of it pitched at making the 600e seem wider, lower, meaner. To its credit, it sort of works, and the effort continues inside with ritzy Sabelt seats in the front – but it’s safe to say you need to come at the car with a hefty affection for Fiat’s original styling job. There’s only so much punk makeup that can be applied to its notoriously cutesy face. The suspicion that it’s winking at you does not go away. 

Credit where it’s due though, the makeover is more than skin deep. Making the tracks chunkier (30mm at the front; 25mm at the rear) has earned the underlying e-CMP platform a ‘Perfo’ moniker, and in the special edition Scorpionissima we drove, you get 280hp from the front-mounted electric motor (the most ever in an Abarth), not to mention the Torsen limited-slip diff denied to the cheaper, lower-powered version. There are fatter tyres to go with a 25mm lower ride height, too, alongside considerably larger Alcon brakes, which is what you want when there is more than 1,600kg to slow down thanks to the presence of a 54kWh battery pack. 

Despite being at the lower end of such things (Abarth quotes a range of 207 miles for the 600e), the fact of this burden is unmistakable in the way the Scorpionissima rides. Which is to say determinedly. Doubtless in search of the kind of pointy direction change that used to mark out the old 595, Abarth has gone to town on the spring rates and anti-roll bars, a decision that can be felt across the dynamic board. Much like the smaller 500e we drove earlier this month, the result is not offensively intrusive, but with only a rear torsion bar and passive dampers to assist it, the 600e’s chassis is incapable of offering anything resembling a ‘Comfort’ mode. 

If you’ve experienced the rolling refinement that characterised the outgoing generation of petrol-powered hot hatches, this is likely to rankle over time. As you might expect, the pay-off (comparatively speaking) is found in the car’s ability to carry fairly serious speed whenever the mood takes you. The established fortes of battery power are generally present and correct, the inherently low centre of gravity and a blasé sense of front-to-back balance, not to mention ample grip and stopping power, conferring easily enough confidence to compensate for the lack of steering feedback and a somewhat hyperactive front end. 

The question of how often the mood will take you is more open-ended. Abarth quotes a respectable 5.9 seconds for the 600e’s 0-62 mph time, but very rarely does that intimated level of performance translate into the sort of real-world buzz most hot hatch owners are chasing. To give Abarth its due, the model’s 254lb ft of torque is well matched to the front-drive chassis, and it has kept a tight handle on the progressive way it is delivered, making the 600e seem more cohesive than it otherwise might. But even in its Scorpion Track setting, with torque steer nibbling at the rim and suitably large numbers on the speedo, you feel like you’re briskly completing a road rather than celebrating it. 

Par for the EV course, you might argue. And given the innate limitations in making the 600e live up to its hot hatch billing, Abarth’s failure to endow the car with the kind of handling nuance that a Civic Type R owner takes for granted is no great surprise. For some, it’s easily won straight-line speed and overtly spiky attitude may well prove persuasive enough – especially with the standard version all set to qualify for the government’s new grant. But for the rest of us, the likes of the Alpine A290 have already provided a glimpse of something better, something lighter and lither and ultimately likelier than the 600e to tickle the funny bone. That final shortfall, much as it did with the 500e, makes for similar also-ran status in the long run.

Engine: permanent magnet single electric motor, 50.8kWh usable battery
Transmission: single-speed auto, front-wheel drive
Power (hp): 280
Torque (lb ft): 254
0-62mph: 5.9 seconds
Top speed: 124mph
Weight: 1,625kg
Efficiency: 3.3 miles/ kWh
Electric range: 207 miles (WLTP), 85kW charging
Price: £39,885