Abarth 1000 SP

The 1000 SP made it's racing debut in the May of 1966 at the hands of the private driver Anzio Zucchi. This debut was significant in the fact that the 1000 SP was designed and produced as a customer car as opposed to an official Abarth Team car. This may have been part of the reason why Carlo Abarth gave his technical director Mario Colucci "carte blanche" with the design. Not surprisingly Colucci chose a tubular chasis and mid-mounted engine combination which he believed to be superior to the box chassis and outboard engine combination favoured by Abarth himself.

The result of this design was a light car weighing in at only 480kg with the already proven Fiat 600 block 982cc bialbero engine which had a 10.5:1 compression ratio, 2 twin-choke Weber 40 DCOE2 carburettors producing 105hp to push the car to 220km/h. The body was fiberglass, but alluminium panels were also available.

Due to the rules at the time the aim was to produce the car in at least 50 examples so as to be homologated in Group 6 for Sports Cars as opposed to Group 9 for Sport Prototypes. This achieved in 1996 the car went on to record a number of class wins including the 500km at the Nurburgring and the Aosta-Pile hillclimb.