SCORPION KING

1956 FIAT ABARTH 750 RECORD BERTONE

Just seven years after it was founded, Abarth was setting speed records with this remarkable streamlined machine

FEW VEHICLES DISPLAY SUCH singularity of purpose as speed record cars. Road cars are required to meet a multitude of goals and even Formula 1 machines must meet the disparate needs of different tracks and tackle corners as well as they do straights. Design a car to go as fast as possible for as long as possible though, and the result is a machine with incredible purity.

And great marketing potential too, of course. Abarth may be best known for hotting-up road cars and building championship-winning rally machines, but founder Karl Abarth realised early on that speed sells, and embarked upon the challenge of setting international speed and endurance records.

The Fiat Abarth 750 Record Bertone of 1956 was the first model to emerge, and achieved exactly whatheset out to do.Penned byFranco Scaglione at Bertone, the tiny streamlined form clothed Fiat 750 mechanicals, lending thecar its numeric name. With aerodynamics like alawn dart’s and aweight ofonly 385kg, it barely mattered that the little four-cylinder 747ccengine mounted behind the driver could muster only 46bhp, as it could give several modern superminis arun for their money in the speed stakes.

This was proven at Monza on 17 and 18 June 1956, when drivers