Track Lapping at Icar near Montreal

I've been sitting on the video for a while. Here's my hot lap with overlay from Harry's Lap Timer!

If you listen attentively you'll hear me screaming... not at the cars ahead of me, but the Blue & Me...

Driving the car on the track is fun. The only other car I've driven here so far was a 04 Mazda Rx-8 with some track inclined mods. The major differences... this car under steers. You really need to chuck it in the corners or reduce your speed and play more in the gears to come out of the turn roaring. That's something the Abarth does pretty well. If you're going at a corner around 50km/h and you're in 2nd, you'll be around the 4000 rpm range. Trust me, as soon as you set your foot down, the car GOES! Overall straight from the factory I would give the Abarth a 3 on 5 for the track. Its fun to drive, does decent in the corners and you have the sense you can feel you're way around a small circuit. BUT needs a stiffer roll bar to get the car to pull its back leg up and really take that corner well!

Neuf Short Shifter for Fiat 500 Abarth Review

Let me first say sorry. Sorry for not posting anything for quite some time. If I had to make up any excuses... well I bought a house and moved in with my GF. NOW with that said, on to what I just bought for my Abarth!

The first and ultra essential mod for any manual Fiat 500 Abarth or not. Obviously I don't have $300 ready to drop at a whims notice (although I wish I could) so I decided to go the inexpensive root. This beautiful Neu-F "by Neuspeed" short shifter adaptor.

In a nut shell, it bolts onto your stock shifter and reduces the throw by 25%. The install was very straight forward, and the instructions in the box were very easy to follow. The worst thing you'll have to do is clean up some edges on the vertical throw arm of the shifter so it sits in the adaptor snugly. Don't worry I didn't really file all that much, but I did file.

So what does the short shifter do, beside reduce the throw. Right off the bat, you feel the shifter pretty much pop into position telling you "hey I'm in gear, lets rock". When in gear you still have a bit of side to side play, so it doesn't solve horizontal movement but it really makes a clean PoP into gear motion when going into every gear.

The only negative I can find right now with this particular adaptor is that, once you finish the install, you'll notice the rod that was once connected to its original position is bending back to accommodate the new location of linkage. I cant compare it against different types of short shifters, but I can say by just observing the movement that it doesn't look detrimental to the rod. We'll see if it snaps off, if it does this post and the short shifter adaptor will disappear from existence and I'll call Fiat and claim a defect :D

Loving it so far. Definitely how the car should have been sold STOCK!!! Get on it Fiat!