Greetings all, bit of background from myself:

I have a BMW Z4M, BMW X5, VW Golf Clipper and a VW Polo runabout and am looking at a 500c Abarth for my wife as a present. She really likes the looks of the Abarth, so I am looking into this one now and have ordered some brochures from the Maidstone dealer.

I have never driven the car, so that will be on the list of things to do to see how it feels. There will obviously be some different expectations as this is an Italian car whilst normally I only have German brands.

I also have no idea about what the normal "must have extras" are on these cars, so will have a good read on the forum about what is available.

The dark grey colour I saw on an advert on Pistonheads looked very nice, so would like to find out if anyone has this colour so I could have a look at some better pictures on this forum.

Anyway, enough of the introduction and onwards in reading the forum ...

Hi and welcome   

got to love the dark grey and I am sure MASSIVE brownie points on buying her the abarth 500c  worth the test drive, I would mention the Esseesse kit which I believe is now available, goes from 135bhp to 160bhp.. and everyone loves the monza exhaust for that special sound 

Welcome.

I just hope my feet fit on top of the pedals - my last memory of a Fiat was a Panda and I was struggling in those days with pressing the accelerator and the brake pedal at the same time. What is space like down there?

Excellent, good to know 

I think you are right there, but I think my wife would prefer the manual though.

One of the first cars I bought her, was a VW Golf GTI 16V (MKII), and she loved it. After that, with the children etc, they have all been "grown up" cars, but she would like to have the smallness and power of something like that again.

Performance wise, they seem pretty similar so should be fun 

yep, paddleshift or auto mode, no conventional  manual option

just the C, the rest are 5 speed manual except the tributo ferrari which is paddleshift with no auto mode