Why Is The Abarth Badge A Scorpion?

Scorpions are tiny. Scorpions are known to have a sharp sting to them, although without enough venom to truly be lethal. Truthfully, scorpions look a little more threatening than they really ought to.

Scorpions, then, have quite a lot in common with the Abarth 500 and its million variants that have spawned over the years. And that is what we call a neat segue into explaining why the Italian firm has a scorpion on its logo.

To answer why, we have to go right back to the beginning of Abarth and to its founder, Carlo Abarth.

It’s March 1949 (not really, obviously, but go with it for a couple of paragraphs). Abarth, born on 15 November 1908 (keep that date in mind), had been the sporting director of the Italian racing team and briefly sports car manufacturer Cisitalia.

Emphasis on ‘had’ as, just months earlier, founder Piero Dusio had fled to Argentina apparently to avoid taxes owed to the Italian government, leaving Cisitalia to liquidate. Abarth saw the opportunity to buy up its remaining Italian assets and, on 31 March that year, founded Abarth & Co.

Its first product would be the Abarth Cisitalia 204A. That car is a story for a whole other time, but for now, it’s worth noting the deal for Abarth’s acquisition of Cistalia assets reportedly meant any cars had to include that name for at least a year. No, we don’t really understand 1940s Italian business law, either.

What it didn’t require was the Cisitalia logo, freeing Abarth to make something of his own. The official reason he picked the scorpion was partly astronomy, the zodiac star sign – which Abarth’s mid-November birth date put him under –  as well as the philosophy of ‘small but mean’.

Less shouted about by Abarth through official means is that a scorpion was seen as difficult to counterfeit at the time, protecting the band.

At first, the logo was simply a scorpion with ‘Abarth & Co Torino’ underneath, a reference to its base in Turin. It wouldn’t take long before a shield found its way behind the arachnid – yellow representing the Abarth’s hometown of Merano and red as a nod to the official Italian motorsport colours.

That logo has remained intact all these years, gradually evolving to be a little less intricate. ‘Abarth & Co’ atop simply became ‘Abarth’ in 1969 as well as a brief switch to a black scorpion before blue returned with Fiat’s acquisition of the brand in 1971. It was at that point the Italian flag appeared, too.

It’d remain that way until 2007, with the relaunch of Abarth as a brand with the new 500 when the black scorpion returned, the Abarth font changed and the Italian flag played a more subtle role. That remains in use today, even on its electric 500e and 600e.

Next time you look at an Abarth, then, just imagine what could’ve been if Carlo had been born as a Pisces.