geir ove rapp’s weblog

Some of you may remember the Fiat Cinquecento from the 50s-70s. (I don’t, but my student colleague from Italy reminded me. Thank you, Enrico!) Abarth, a tuning company in the Fiat group, have no put their hands on the new new Fiat 500. The result is what you can see on the picture, a little 1.4 liter 16v turbo charged 135 horsepower Scorpion.  The car will be shown at the 2008 Geneva International Motor Show later this month.

I have been working on a analysis on Volvo Cars at school lately. (Yes, I am studying in Gothenburg, Sweden, the home town of Volvo). Soon we had a discussion about whether Volvo is a dull car or not. Of course it is! Just take a look at the Volvo V70 station wagon to see what I mean. But then, in my search to see if there is a slight hope to find something more exciting I dumped into the Volvo you see on the picture above. It is a Volvo C30 modified and tuned by IPD. It doesn’t only look great. It performs great as well. The 2.5-liter turbo engine is boosted to 384 horsepower. And it of course has a Alpine DVD/CD/MP3 player with iPOD integration, satellite radio with live traffic and touch-screen navigation with voice control.

So who said Volvo is dull?