Car manufacturer founded in Turin in 1949 by the Italian-Austrian motorcyclist Carlo Abarth; following a serious accident he was forced to abandon his career. He fell back, with some success, on the marketing of mufflers, lined with glass wool so as to increase performance with an unmistakable roar. Then he became a designer and transformer of cars offering, to the owners of small cars, the possibility to customize and develop their car with simple kits.
The corporate brand was, from the very beginning, a scorpion; Carlo Abarth did not want only a reference to his zodiac sign but an original and difficult to imitate logo. Initially the scorpion was free from frames and carried the words “Abarth & Cº – Torino”.
In 1954 it was thought to include these elements within a shield, a symbol of victory and passion; the yellow writing “Abarth & C °” on the blue color while the scorpion lived on the red and yellow, typical colors of the racing world.
Someone else traces the choice of these colors back to the city of Merano in Trentino, the birthplace of Carlo’s father. This logo began to appear on racing cars, which were the first to be assembled starting from the chassis acquired from the bankruptcy of another historic car manufacturer: Cisitalia.
In 1958 the logo contained only the letter “C” pointed out while in 1961 the scorpion became more essential in color and shape.
In 1969 another restyling: only the “Abarth” logo, white on blue, and a bold graphic synthesis of the scorpion that appears in black on the yellow and red cut field.
In 1971 the company was bought by Fiat and, from that moment, it remained as the name of the sports versions of the various logos of the group; for this occasion another version of the logo was conceived showing the blue scorpion and the Italian tricolor, also in an unlikely version with the horizontal tricolor.
In 2007 the Fiat group decided to relaunch this sports logo, which became the fourth logo of the group; it was necessary to modernize the distinctive features of the logo, maintaining its heritage and recognizability by re-proposing all the expressive power of the scorpion in a contemporary key. In the restyling, conceived by Carrè Noir of Turin, the shape of the scorpion remains somewhat unchanged but rotates so that the claws and the head are in yellow and the rest of the body in red; the lettering finds a strong distinctive charge, composed with the “Microgram” font and the tricolor logo enhances the connotation of “made in Italy”. There is also a version with a “3D” chrome steel effect treatment.
