No 500 Abarth on show, that’s not expected until Tokyo. If you check my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmullett/ you can see the Punto S2000 I managed to get some decent photos of. Looked very cool actually, but those women kept wanting to get in the way of the photographers, such a chore.

Was the Punto Abarth there and did it look like a ‘production ready’ version?

Was there a 500 Abarth on display and did you learn anything new about the Abarth vehicles we might get in the UK?

It was interesting to see the Grand Punto Abarth, SS Concept and S2000, which I think provide a hint at the updates the 500 will have made to it in terms of appearance.

I picked up a copy (and only a single copy, I did try to blag an extra, but couldn’t get away with it) of the ring bound brochure featured here in the downloads section, it’s very nice.

The stand was interesting, but didn’t really show much that hasn’t been shown before in relation to the 500, and I thought actually not very well laid out.

That said, the huge Fiat 500 ride was grabbing a fair amount of attention.

The leather seats in the display cars were good, the colour choices and options on the display cars was good to see, much better than the silver car we drove at Motorvogue last month. The metallic white “Funk White” looked really good, especially under the show lights.

Italian flag colours you see. How very original.

However, we can report that the Fiat stand, and the 500 section in particular is pretty impressive. The whole thing is set up in a very playful way, you can ride a Fiat 500 train through a giant Fiat 500 model, complete with car-wash (photos will explain better) and lights full of flashing tunnels.

There seems to be a good deal of interest in the Fiat 500, but not exceptionally so, however one small bone of contention for us has to be the lack of variety of cars on static display. The ride features different spec and colours, but on show it all appears a little white. Well, very white.